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The cover to the third book, rejected for being too scary
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Beneath heaven is hell. Beneath hell is Furnace.
—The warden
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Escape from Furnace is a series of five books written by Alexander Gordon Smith detailing the adventures of Alex Sawyer in escaping Furnace - an underground penitentiary for teenage criminals.
The books are:
- "Lockdown"
- "Solitary"
- "Death Sentence"
- "Fugitives"
- "Execution"
This novel features the following tropes:[]
- Adults Are Useless - Kids are being dragged down to be tortured for life at an underground penitentiary and nobody even cares. Alex vaguely mentions about there being protests, but mostly, adults are just glad of getting rid of the problematic kids. Teens Are Monsters is a common belief in that world, though, what explains the mentality.
- The Alcatraz - Furnace. Together with Hellhole Prison, it defines the plot.
- Anyone Can Die - And how. Just don't get too attached.
- Big Bad - The warden.
- Bigger Bad - Alfred Furnace.
- Body Horror - The series runs on it, basically.
- The Bully - Alex himself used to be one.
- Contemplate Our Navels - Particularly in Solitary, for obvious reasons, and in the beginning of Death Sentence.
- Crapsack World
- Deus Angst Machina
- The Dog Bites Back - The warden learns it the hard way.
- Fate Worse Than Death - Being taken by the Blood Watch.
- Faux Affably Evil - The warden. Sometimes, Alex notices that he's being genuinely affable, but it doesn't last very long, and most of his smiles are all acts.
- Gas Mask Mooks - The Wheezers.
- He Who Fights Monsters
- Humanoid Abomination - Alex describes many of the horrors of gen pop as being that. What makes the rats, blacksuits, wheezers, berserkers and even the warden so scary for him are the fact that they look like people who came out very wrong.
- It Got Worse
- I Want Them Alive - The warden to Alex, but mostly because death is an easy way out.
- Kick the Morality Pet - Ozzie's death by Alex' hands
- Master Race - The Blacksuits.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane - While Escape from Furnace explain its horrors through science, The Night Children short story has this incredibly creepy lore to explain the exact same things.
- Mercy Kill - Donovan, by Alex. Zee tries to do the samething to Alex, and asks Alex to do it for him as well
- A Nazi by Any Other Name - Furnace and Warden Cross were actually nazis, which explain their desire to create a Master Race and rule the World.
- No Swastikas - Guess what the Furnace symbol stands for?
- Peer Pressure Makes You Evil
- Please Put Some Clothes On - Hilariously between Zee and Alex, with Zee stating that Alex, with his worn out, ragged, ill-fitting prison outfit, is looking "practically indecent".
- So Proud of You - The warden to Alex. Of course, it turns into Disappointed in You very fast.
- Start of Darkness - A good deal of Death Sentence and "The Night Children" short story are about that.
- Took a Level In Badass - Alex after becoming a Blacksuit.
- Trauma Conga Line
- Was Once a Man - Every horror in furnace