---
product_id: 61842925
title: "The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace)"
price: "₨10094"
currency: LKR
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reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.lk/products/61842925-the-scorpion-rules-prisoners-of-peace
store_origin: LK
region: Sri Lanka
---

# The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace)

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- **What is this?** The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace)
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## Description

The children of world leaders are held hostage in an attempt to keep the peace in this “slyly humorous, starkly thought-provoking” ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review) novel. Greta is a Duchess and a Crown Princess. She is also a Child of Peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world, the great Artificial Intelligence, Talis. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Start a war and your hostage dies. The system has worked for centuries. Parents don’t want to see their children murdered. Greta will be free if she can make it to her eighteenth birthday. Until then she is prepared to die with dignity, if necessary. But everything changes when Elian arrives at the Precepture. He’s a hostage from a new American alliance, and he defies the machines that control every part of their lives—and is severely punished for it. His rebellion opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the rules they live under, and to the subtle resistance of her companions. And Greta discovers her own quiet power. Then Elian’s country declares war on Greta’s and invades the prefecture, taking the hostages hostage. Now the great Talis is furious, and coming himself to deliver punishment. Which surely means that Greta and Elian will be killed...unless Greta can think of a way to break all the rules.

Review: This book was like id-fic for me - This book was like id-fic for me. So many elements from my dreams– and nightmares. It’s an Omelas-type dystopia- a world where the good of the many depends on the suffering of the few. In this case, the few are the children of 25th century world leaders, who are kept hostage throughout their childhood (or as long as their parents are in power) to ensure that their parents don’t start wars. If their parents do, the children are killed. Greta Gustafsen Stuart, our narrator, believes in the system even though it keeps her as a hostage at risk of death. She has a strong sense of dignity, both as a person and in terms of her position as a “Child of Peace”. Elian, a new arrival at the monastery-like residence of the hostages, has an entirely different idea of dignity. He’s defiant in the face of what he sees as an unjust system, comparing himself to Spartacus, and while the children’s robotic minders go to extreme lengths– even torture– to get him to comply, he continues to rebel until it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who’ll suffer if he keeps it up. In another author’s hands, Elian would be the love interest, but while they kiss a few times and grow close over the course of the novel, Greta’s major romantic relationship is with her (female) roommate, Xie. Greta is slow to question the system, but she eventually sees the wrongness of her captors’ treatment of Elian– and then they turn on her, too. Ironically, it’s while she’s being tortured with the induced nightmares of “Dreamlock” that the residence is invaded by Elian’s people, who have figured out a way to declare war without sacrificing their hostage. The country they’ve declared war on is Greta’s, and they will stop at nothing to use her against her family. Oh, did I mention that this whole hostage system is run by an AI? Talis, the AI, is not happy with the hostage-taking of the hostages. He arrives to sort things out. The trouble is that his idea of sorting things out often involves killing people and destroying entire cities. I don’t want to summarize the entire plot, but hopefully that gives you an idea of how much you’d like this book. One of its great strengths (it’s written by an ex-physicist) is how well-thought out the AI’s and the technology are– and they become increasingly important as the plot goes on. I normally loathe stories where a person “uploads their mind,” because they fail to take into account that the lack of continuity between the consciousness in the body and the consciousness in the copy, but a few books do it well (Peter Dickinson’s Eva springs to mind). This book doesn’t address all my concerns, but it explores the concept in more interesting ways than most do, I wish the geopolitics had that same depth– while the cast is diverse (Xie is Asian and Elian is Jewish and “racially indeterminate, like many Americans”), I didn’t feel that the future countries from which the hostages besides Greta and Elian, who are both North American, come were that plausible or textured. Another weakness is that sometimes concepts are introduced out of nowhere when they become necessary, like “dreamlock,” which was introduced so abruptly that it didn’t feel like an organic part of the world. However, the strengths more than outweigh the weaknesses. I stayed up till two to see what happened next in this tension-filled story. Erin Bow isn’t afraid to go dark, hard places (and I’m not talking about the violence, but about Greta’s choice at the end and its fallout). Furthermore, characters on all sides of the conflicts have depth and pride, have standards below which they will not sink, even if those standards are very different from person to person. Greta is a great heroine. I love people who can see past their own self-interest, and while she’s not exactly right when she believes in the hostage system, she’s also noble. I loved her, and I hope she narrates the companion novel, due out next year, as well. A nonspoilery standout moment in terms of emotion was Greta’s mother’s insistence that Greta not be painted in her monastic Child-of-Peace outfit, because she wants one picture of her not dressed as “Joan of bloody Arc!” And you know it’s because Greta might well die in her role as a Child of Peace, and her mother wants some reminder that’s not connected to the hostage system. I am waiting on tenterhooks for the sequel. Next year can’t come fast enough. Review also here:[...]
Review: (the sequel just came out if that tells you how behind I am LOL) but this in no way lessens my love for it - Now I am admittedly WAY behind jumping on the fan train for this fabulous book, (the sequel just came out if that tells you how behind I am LOL) but this in no way lessens my love for it. First off (since I’m doing this for #BiWeek in the first place) let’s talk about the bisexual rep. Hell, the fact that it HAS bisexual rep is huge in the first place. There are books out there with bi protags, but it’s definitely taken a while for them to gain momentum and visibility, and even then, SFF is slow to catch up with the contemporary fic numbers. Granted, I don’t believe THE SCORPION RULES explicitly used the word “bisexual” (or if it did, I blinked & missed it), which is a little disappointing, but it still had a bi main character which matters so much to the young!me who never really understood being bisexual was even an option until after college because I never saw it on paper in any of the (many and varied) books that I read. Better yet, Greta’s sexuality is taken simply as a matter of course. She’s bi in the book, but the book isn’t about her being bi if that makes sense. Who she’s attracted to is all about who those individuals are, not what their gender is. It was honestly refreshing to read a book where the character doesn’t struggle with her own sexual identity and instead just accepts it and moves on. There is definitely value to “discovering identity &/or coming out” stories, but it was nice to have bisexuality delivered without any angst (well, the book has LOTS of angst & heartbreak, just not about Greta’s sexuality LOL). So yeah, it’s definitely on my list of books to rec for anyone looking for bisexuality in a SFF book. But really, it’s on my list of books to rec period. This was such a fascinating world for me. Historically, hostage children were fostered fairly regularly prior to the modern age we’re in, but we don’t often seen that addressed in anything but historical novels. This is one of the first I’ve seen do it in YA sci-fi, and I just love the concept of this politically fraught landscape and the stressors placed on the hostage children, who might in another series have been the spoiled royals the reader loves to hate. It was also a very interesting mix of heavy duty technological details mixed with the almost bucolic setting of the Prefecture where the hostage children are forced to live and work. And, I know several other reviews have mentioned it, but as someone who grew up on a ranch with aggravating goats: seriously spot on rural details there! Goats in a tree will never cease to be the most annoying and befuddling thing to have to try to deal with during daily chores LOL. Finally, y’all, an AI rules the world. As a girl who grew up with the Terminator and still loves all of the reboots, the Skynet parallels were fantastic. Really what more do you want? By the way, I do feel I need to leave some trigger warnings here. This is a book about war: as “quiet” of a book as it starts out to be, you have to know it’s going to get darker and darker as the book goes on. The children are captives waiting for death, and that death can’t be avoided for some of them. Also, there is explicit, on page torture and some truly gruesome hand injuries (which HOW DO I KEEP FINDING AMAZING BOOKS THAT GIVE ME HAND INJURY NIGHTMARES??) so if either of those will cause issues for it, read very carefully and be prepared to set the book down if you need to. But yeah, I really did love this book. I’m buying the sequel, THE SWAN RIDERS, just as soon as reach my goal of getting 15 books off the TBR mountain prior to purchasing anything else (good lord the mountain has gotten out of hand, y’all – I’ve GOT to find more reading time in my days LOL). It sounds just as good as this first book was, so I’m super excited to get my hands on it!

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,963,513 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,190 in Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction Action & Adventure #1,388 in Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Fiction (Books) #1,566 in Teen & Young Adult Survival Stories |
| Customer Reviews | 3.9 out of 5 stars 239 Reviews |

## Images

![The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/819GfuyAmxL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This book was like id-fic for me
*by M***A on May 4, 2016*

This book was like id-fic for me. So many elements from my dreams– and nightmares. It’s an Omelas-type dystopia- a world where the good of the many depends on the suffering of the few. In this case, the few are the children of 25th century world leaders, who are kept hostage throughout their childhood (or as long as their parents are in power) to ensure that their parents don’t start wars. If their parents do, the children are killed. Greta Gustafsen Stuart, our narrator, believes in the system even though it keeps her as a hostage at risk of death. She has a strong sense of dignity, both as a person and in terms of her position as a “Child of Peace”. Elian, a new arrival at the monastery-like residence of the hostages, has an entirely different idea of dignity. He’s defiant in the face of what he sees as an unjust system, comparing himself to Spartacus, and while the children’s robotic minders go to extreme lengths– even torture– to get him to comply, he continues to rebel until it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who’ll suffer if he keeps it up. In another author’s hands, Elian would be the love interest, but while they kiss a few times and grow close over the course of the novel, Greta’s major romantic relationship is with her (female) roommate, Xie. Greta is slow to question the system, but she eventually sees the wrongness of her captors’ treatment of Elian– and then they turn on her, too. Ironically, it’s while she’s being tortured with the induced nightmares of “Dreamlock” that the residence is invaded by Elian’s people, who have figured out a way to declare war without sacrificing their hostage. The country they’ve declared war on is Greta’s, and they will stop at nothing to use her against her family. Oh, did I mention that this whole hostage system is run by an AI? Talis, the AI, is not happy with the hostage-taking of the hostages. He arrives to sort things out. The trouble is that his idea of sorting things out often involves killing people and destroying entire cities. I don’t want to summarize the entire plot, but hopefully that gives you an idea of how much you’d like this book. One of its great strengths (it’s written by an ex-physicist) is how well-thought out the AI’s and the technology are– and they become increasingly important as the plot goes on. I normally loathe stories where a person “uploads their mind,” because they fail to take into account that the lack of continuity between the consciousness in the body and the consciousness in the copy, but a few books do it well (Peter Dickinson’s Eva springs to mind). This book doesn’t address all my concerns, but it explores the concept in more interesting ways than most do, I wish the geopolitics had that same depth– while the cast is diverse (Xie is Asian and Elian is Jewish and “racially indeterminate, like many Americans”), I didn’t feel that the future countries from which the hostages besides Greta and Elian, who are both North American, come were that plausible or textured. Another weakness is that sometimes concepts are introduced out of nowhere when they become necessary, like “dreamlock,” which was introduced so abruptly that it didn’t feel like an organic part of the world. However, the strengths more than outweigh the weaknesses. I stayed up till two to see what happened next in this tension-filled story. Erin Bow isn’t afraid to go dark, hard places (and I’m not talking about the violence, but about Greta’s choice at the end and its fallout). Furthermore, characters on all sides of the conflicts have depth and pride, have standards below which they will not sink, even if those standards are very different from person to person. Greta is a great heroine. I love people who can see past their own self-interest, and while she’s not exactly right when she believes in the hostage system, she’s also noble. I loved her, and I hope she narrates the companion novel, due out next year, as well. A nonspoilery standout moment in terms of emotion was Greta’s mother’s insistence that Greta not be painted in her monastic Child-of-Peace outfit, because she wants one picture of her not dressed as “Joan of bloody Arc!” And you know it’s because Greta might well die in her role as a Child of Peace, and her mother wants some reminder that’s not connected to the hostage system. I am waiting on tenterhooks for the sequel. Next year can’t come fast enough. Review also here:[...]

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (the sequel just came out if that tells you how behind I am LOL) but this in no way lessens my love for it
*by C***E on September 23, 2016*

Now I am admittedly WAY behind jumping on the fan train for this fabulous book, (the sequel just came out if that tells you how behind I am LOL) but this in no way lessens my love for it. First off (since I’m doing this for #BiWeek in the first place) let’s talk about the bisexual rep. Hell, the fact that it HAS bisexual rep is huge in the first place. There are books out there with bi protags, but it’s definitely taken a while for them to gain momentum and visibility, and even then, SFF is slow to catch up with the contemporary fic numbers. Granted, I don’t believe THE SCORPION RULES explicitly used the word “bisexual” (or if it did, I blinked & missed it), which is a little disappointing, but it still had a bi main character which matters so much to the young!me who never really understood being bisexual was even an option until after college because I never saw it on paper in any of the (many and varied) books that I read. Better yet, Greta’s sexuality is taken simply as a matter of course. She’s bi in the book, but the book isn’t about her being bi if that makes sense. Who she’s attracted to is all about who those individuals are, not what their gender is. It was honestly refreshing to read a book where the character doesn’t struggle with her own sexual identity and instead just accepts it and moves on. There is definitely value to “discovering identity &/or coming out” stories, but it was nice to have bisexuality delivered without any angst (well, the book has LOTS of angst & heartbreak, just not about Greta’s sexuality LOL). So yeah, it’s definitely on my list of books to rec for anyone looking for bisexuality in a SFF book. But really, it’s on my list of books to rec period. This was such a fascinating world for me. Historically, hostage children were fostered fairly regularly prior to the modern age we’re in, but we don’t often seen that addressed in anything but historical novels. This is one of the first I’ve seen do it in YA sci-fi, and I just love the concept of this politically fraught landscape and the stressors placed on the hostage children, who might in another series have been the spoiled royals the reader loves to hate. It was also a very interesting mix of heavy duty technological details mixed with the almost bucolic setting of the Prefecture where the hostage children are forced to live and work. And, I know several other reviews have mentioned it, but as someone who grew up on a ranch with aggravating goats: seriously spot on rural details there! Goats in a tree will never cease to be the most annoying and befuddling thing to have to try to deal with during daily chores LOL. Finally, y’all, an AI rules the world. As a girl who grew up with the Terminator and still loves all of the reboots, the Skynet parallels were fantastic. Really what more do you want? By the way, I do feel I need to leave some trigger warnings here. This is a book about war: as “quiet” of a book as it starts out to be, you have to know it’s going to get darker and darker as the book goes on. The children are captives waiting for death, and that death can’t be avoided for some of them. Also, there is explicit, on page torture and some truly gruesome hand injuries (which HOW DO I KEEP FINDING AMAZING BOOKS THAT GIVE ME HAND INJURY NIGHTMARES??) so if either of those will cause issues for it, read very carefully and be prepared to set the book down if you need to. But yeah, I really did love this book. I’m buying the sequel, THE SWAN RIDERS, just as soon as reach my goal of getting 15 books off the TBR mountain prior to purchasing anything else (good lord the mountain has gotten out of hand, y’all – I’ve GOT to find more reading time in my days LOL). It sounds just as good as this first book was, so I’m super excited to get my hands on it!

### ⭐⭐⭐ A somewhat disappointing dystopian novel for teens
*by S***B on January 29, 2016*

The book starts with an original and interesting idea. We are introduced to a dystopian scenario where, after a past set of events that we do not witness but we are told that almost caused the annihilation of humanity, peace is finally achieved by the intervention of an extremely sophisticated artificial intelligence(AI) being, who keeps order in the world through fear. With the help of some other inferior, but efficient AI creatures and machines, this being keeps the children of the world's rulers as hostages in a forced labour/study camp situated in a remote area of Saskatchewan, Canada. All of this lasts until the hostages reach their 18th birthday, when, if they are still alive, they are sent home to work on their political career. If before that age, their countries declare war to each other, the children of the rulers involved are immediately killed by an angel/demon who arrives at the camp riding his or her horse among clouds of dust. The kids are fully aware of the situation, and deal with their fear of death, sense of pride and social responsibility in different ways, depending on their character and status (some rulers are more powerful than others). The protagonist is a 16 years old girl of high lineage, who tells us the story from her perspective. An interesting start, but unfortunately, once the stage is set, the plot then develops without a good flow. It looses steam and purpose and sometimes becomes just a literary pastiche. In addition, politically correct lesbian sex with no steam and no real purpose, is thrown into the plot when it really does not need to be brought into the picture. Parents/educators may find it inappropriate, teens may find it, if not inappropriate, just predictable and boring. There was really no need for sex in this story. Finally, the great ruler of the world, the supreme AI being that you have been hearing about from the first page, when finally comes into the picture, leaves you quite unimpressed . The finale is not grand, and you are left hanging in there, with no real burning desire for a sequel. Altogether disappointing.

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*Last updated: 2026-09-07*