Escape from Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith tells us our bad choices could take us somewhere we don’t want to be

Lockdown: Escape from Furnace by Alexander smith
Published by favours children’s books
273 pages

In Lockdown: Escape from Furnace by Alexander Smith, protagonist Alex Sawyer is a teenager framed for killing his friend. Alex and his friends rob houses. One day, they rob the wrong house. They are suddenly confronted by two men dressed in all black and gas masks who put a gun to the friend’s head and say in a deep voice, “Alex, you are going to jail for the rest of your life,” before pulling the trigger. They throw the gun to Alex and tell him that they will give him a head start to run. Alex doesn’t get too far before the men catch up to him and tell him that he will be going to a place ominously called, “The Furnace.”

The way this book starts off is very interesting. It starts off with the main character inside a house robbing it, so quiet you can only hear the blood flowing throughout the boys’ bodies. Things don’t end up going as planned for the boys but this is something that has never happened before and this is where the story starts to get a little scary and suspenseful.

The suspense continues in the next setting. As this story carries on, Alex gets put in this deep dark nasty place called the furnace. It is so deep in the ground people say it is below hell and it is impossible to escape. As Alex is on his way to the furnace with other kids he overhears one of them say, “Once you’re in the furnace there is no way out.” As soon as I stepped into the furnace you would think it would be hot considering the name, but the place was a cold as freezer. I could feel the shivers run down my spine as I see the guards dressed in all black just standing in there watching everything you do and every move.

The setting is fairly creepy. Alex’s maniac cellmate would always be talking to himself and Alex would ask him, “What are you doing? Are you ok?” but he would ever answer him. One day when the psycho actually responds to Alex saying, “There is a way out, there’s always a way out,” Alex starts to think to himself, “maybe there is a way out of the furnace, maybe if I listen to the psycho things might turn out well.” This is where the suspense comes in play, putting Alex in the position of making an escape plan to get out the furnace. After Alex starts to make a few friends he attempts to put together an escape plan.

Alex, which happens to also be the author’s real name is the brains of the operation: he is the one that puts the plans together and calls the shots. He is an interesting character because his intelligence makes him a strong individual. Alex is also a very curious character in the book:while in the furnace, he loves to snoop around and see what is going on in this crazy place.

The moral of this story is that by making wrong decisions and dong bad choices could take us somewhere no one would ever want to be; so make the right choice and don’t try to fit in where you don’t belong.
This book is the first of the Lockdown series of five books including. Solitary, Death Sentence, fugitive and Execution. This is a very good series of book and would recommend reading them if your into suspense and cliffhangers and action this series is filled with all of that. This book is filled with cliffhangers so be ready and expect the unexpected.