Book Review: Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith

  

Title: Taken 

Author: Alexander Gordon Smith

Publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Release Date:  October 27th 2009

Series: Escape from the Furnace

Source: Hardcover

Number of Pages: 273

Synopsis: Furnace Penitentiary: the world’s most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth’s surface. Convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, sentenced to life without parole, “new fish” Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world. Except in Furnace, death is the least of his worries. Soon Alex discovers that the prison is a place of pure evil, where inhuman creatures in gas masks stalk the corridors at night, where giants in black suits drag screaming inmates into the shadows, where deformed beasts can be heard howling from the blood-drenched tunnels below. And behind everything is the mysterious, all-powerful warden, a man as cruel and dangerous as the devil himself, whose unthinkable acts have consequences that stretch far beyond the walls of the prison. 

Together with a bunch of inmates—some innocent kids who have been framed, others cold-blooded killers—Alex plans an escape. But as he starts to uncover the truth about Furnace’s deeper, darker purpose, Alex’s actions grow ever more dangerous, and he must risk everything to expose this nightmare that’s hidden from the eyes of the world.


Alex Sawyer is a boy who grew up in the rough part of town where children spent their free time acting like gangsters. A school yard bully, Alex soon gratudes to becoming a thief. He and his friend Tobey break into houses while their owners are away on vacation. It's a sweet gig, but two years later the law catches up to him. It was supposed to be a simple gig, but it all went wrong. Now Tobey is dead and Alex is framed for his death. At 14, Alex is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He is sent to Furnace Penitentiary, the world's most secure prison, located underground. The Furnace is no regular prison, and Alex will be lucky if he makes it to his 18 birthday.

The biggest downside about this book is that it requires you to suspend your disbelief. One of the biggest issue is the zero tolerance for child offenders. It's hard for me to ever picture a time when society will sentence children to life in jail with no chance of parole. Even in today's society you are able to appeal a conviction, and most criminals at least have a chance of parole.

Another problem is that I felt more of a connection with the supporting characters than I did with Alex. Now I know that the author didn't mean for it to happen, but the way he wrote the supporting characters just drew me in. In particular Donavon quickly became my favorite character. It got so bad that near the end of the book when he is taken by The Death Watch, I ended up wishing that they had taken Alex rather than him.

Besides every thing stated above, I didn't have any other gripes with the book. One of the best things about Lockdown is how descriptive Alexander Gordon Smith's writing is. "They didn't have any skin. Their slick bodies were made up of the muscles and tendons that bulged in plain view, throbbing gently with the beating of their hearts." If that's not enough to give you chills, then i don't know what is. Smith describes his monsters so well that you can vividly picture them in your head. This book would make for one hell of a horror movie.
The greatest take away from the book for me was all the questions it leaves you to ponder. Like when Zee (one of the prisoners) suggests that the kids are being taken so that they could be experimented on like the Nazis did. Or when Alex suggest that since The Furnace is a private prison that someone is framing the teens to meet the quota requirements for the prison. It makes you wonder are today's private prisons really interested in rehabilitating their prisoners or are they just content to release them and let them get rearrested. Since the more prisoners they have the more cash they rake in. 

Rating: 4/5 Stars