The House of the Scorpion - Nancy Farmer

...He rambled on about his youth in Aztlan. It was called Mexico when he was a boy, he said. He came from a place called Durango. “People from Durango are called alacránes - scorpions - because there are so many of them scurrying around. When I made my first million, I took that as my name: Matteo Alacrán. It’s your name too.”Matt smiled, well pleased that he shared something with El Patrón.

Opium is a country that lies on the outskirts of the United States, it is part of what used to be Mexico. It is a country that has been sealed off from the rest of the world by a very powerful drug baron, El Patrón. House of the Scorpion focuses on a little boy called Matt. It follows his horrific childhood and flows into his interesting adolescence. He begins to find out everything there is to know about the drug kings empire, including just how shut off it is from the rest of the world. One of the most fascinating things about the book setting is that Opium’s technology has been partially halted. Opium has been kept 100 years in the past, while the rest of the world has evolved and developed. Matt makes some fascinating discoveries about himself and his home as the book advances. (Read The Lord of Opium, the sequel that begins 12 hours after the end of this one).

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