#PBwkendread Review: Lockdown (Escape From Furnace #1) by Alexander Gordon Smith
Title: Lockdown (Escape From Furnace #1)Published: Aug. 3, 2010
Publisher: Square Fish
Pages: 273
Genre: YA/Teen
Review: Paperback from Library
Buy Links: Amazon, Amazon.uk
Beneath Heaven is Hell. Beneath Hell is Furnace.
Furnace Penitentiary: An underground hellhole. A place of pure evil with walls soaked in blood. Murderous gangs and vicious guards rule the darkness. Horrific creatures steal people away in the dead of night. And the impossible - escape - is the only hope.
The cover and the first paragraph called to me on this one and I was very excited to get busy on reading it.
So Lockdown is all based around a penitentiary for those that break the law the thing of it is, is that this penitentiary is underground I mean there is nothing but rock surrounding people. There is no way out but only one way in. The boys that are in it are young they have all been found guilty of a crime and this is their punishment.
So we are introduced to the character Alex. He had a decent life that is until he followed the wrong path, his path was stealing and breaking and entering homes. Well it all catches up to him one day and now he finds himself in the Furnace Penitentiary. It isn't like he doesn't know what it is because they have all been told about it. Though now that he is on the inside of the fence he knows that it is not a place he wants to be in.
The Furnace is not like any other place, the guards are very fast and weird looking, the wheezer's are horrible, the dogs that they have roaming around are even worse, lets not even talk about the food that is served.
There are rules in place and you need to follow them to survive, no one is promised tomorrow and Alex is learning this first hand. His bunk mate Donovan educates Alex the best he can on how everything is ran but you can see Alex doesn't want to truly follow the rules.
Now as I enjoyed this story and I would have given it a straight up 5 because it does deserve it I feel as though something was missing within the story. I am not sure if it was because I didn't know where all this was taken place at or maybe the year. It just felt off to me.
When Alex was running from the scene of the crime it was like the men in black suits knew what he was up to and I felt that the author could have elaborated a bit more on this. Were they watching those that went down the path of destruction or were they just picking certain people out? These little things had me drop a star so it is going to be a 4.
From the beginning you are hooked on reading until the very end. You end up asking yourself if there is a way out or will this be the end for Alex and his "friends." A lot of action and fast paced scenes that have you wanting to read more, can't wait to pick up book two from my library.
#PaperbackFriday
Alexander Gordon Smith is the author of the Escape from Furnace series of young adult novels, includingLockdown and Solitary. Born in 1979 in Norwich, England, he always wanted to be a writer. After experimenting in the service and retail trades for a few years, Smith decided to go to University. He studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and it was here that he first explored his love of publishing. Along with poet Luke Wright, he founded Egg Box Publishing, a groundbreaking magazine and press that promotes talented new authors. He also started writing literally hundreds of articles, short stories and books ranging from Scooby Doo comic strips to world atlases, Midsomer Murders to X-Files. The endless research for these projects led to countless book ideas germinating in his head. His first book, The Inventors, written with his nine-year-old brother Jamie, was published in the U.K. in 2007. He lives in England.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/alexan...
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