He is the moral compass of the book, yearning for his family, friendship, and the chance to change. Alex is a normal teenager – flawed, but essentially good. Furnace now frames teenagers for murder in order to keep society in line and to provide fodder for the warden’s horrific experiments. It speaks to fears that teenagers have today, namely, fears of being wrongfully accused and the loss of freedom – within a fantastic setting.Īlex is a petty thief, but he is not a murderer. But are they really free of Furnace?Ĭritical Evaluation : Set in dystopian England, Furnace is a horror novel set in a science fiction universe. The next day, the boys manage to blow a hole in an old passage using gas-filled gloves they collected from kitchen duty and jump to their freedom. Shaken but undeterred, Alex promises to come back for him. The night before they are to escape, Alex’s cellmate, Donovan, is taken in a nightly raid.

The warden is conducting genetic experiments on the inmates taken in the middle of the night.Īlex and a group of inmates he befriends, stick together to stay alive and plot their escape from Furnace. Alex learns quickly that Furnace’s gangs are the least of his problems: nightly raids by creatures in gas masks drag inmates off for purposes unknown vicious doglike animals can attack at any moment, and something is going on deep in the tunnels of Furnace. He’s sentenced to Furnace, a hellish underground youth prison constructed years earlier when gang wars escalated into mass violence.įurnace, located a mile below ground, is a one-way trip – inmates are sentenced for life, which doesn’t usually last long. Alex witnesses in horror as they shoot Toby dead, framing Alex for his murder. When he and his friend Toby break into a home one night, it’s anything but business as usual when they find themselves confronted with a group of men in suits. Plot summary: The first in the Escape from Furnace series, Lockdown introduces readers to 14-year-old Alex, a petty thief. 2010, Farrrar Straus Giroux, ISBN 978-3-4

Lockdown escape the furnace