Death Sentence: Escape from Furnace/ Alexander Gordon Smith
Square Fish, 2009, 261 pp.
Horror

The gates of Hell have reopened and the Devil’s spawn welcomes you. You must fight the evil in yourself, The Warden, and all the horrors that lie in the depths of this inhuman world, buried hundreds of hopeless thoughts beyond freedom. What will you do? What can you do?

Alex has desperately tried to escape Furnace. Now, the Warden and his black-suited monsters, along with the gas mask freaks have captured him and his two friends, Simon and Zee. “The black suits had lit the incinerator when we were halfway up, and pulled us from the flames…” Alex has barely awakened from tumbling down the incinerator- the end of the horrors in Furnace-or so he thought. But when he tries to make sense of his surroundings, Alex knows that this couldn't be death, or freedom, either one was better than Furnace. Of course, he already knows the Warden planned on cooking up something very “special” for Alex—like turning him into the black-suits, who were once real boys, but now they looked and thought like animals in somewhat human form.-. The Warden laid Alex down, so he could transform Alex into someone who meant something, someone who was respected. Not someone who was pushed around. “Then I felt the needle in my arm, and something cold rushed into my veins... I knew exactly what it was…a drip full of evil.” The Warden was turning Alex into a malicious, unsympathetic, inhuman freak - he wanted Alex to go against his own self and his beliefs of who he really was and become something more. A relentless black suit.
The author definitely attained what he so descriptively wrote about. The story both entertained me, but the author still issued a powerful meaning. “Don’t forget who you are.” Description and diction definitely strengthened this book. He used words to help your understanding of the book. Foreshadowing had the best effect on the book. I had to read on and on and on, because I couldn't stand the anticipation of the next chapter. I will say that I got confused in some of the paragraphs, mostly because of the way the author worded and structured the sentence. The author repeated much of the same word an ample amount of times, which I felt weakened the book .But, overall this book had me scared to death and hanging off my seat. I felt like I became my own character in the book-attached to the characters, as if I knew them. When Alex, Simon, and Zee fought, I also fought in combat, right beside them. I would not recommend this for young children or people who don't like horror novels.
Death Sentence: Escape from Furnace gives you a great experience throughout the whole story. It teaches us as an audience to never let anyone or anything get the best of you, no matter how many times you have failed. Everything can be broken, and if you strike it hard enough it will fall.