From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up—"Beneath heaven is hell. Beneath hell is Furnace." That's 14-year-old Alex's description of the underground prison a mile below the surface of the earth where he and other teen boys are incarcerated for life. The first title (Farrar, Straus, 2009) in Alexander Gordon Smith's new series begins when the protagonist is caught by strange silver-eyed men as he and a buddy are in the midst of a house burglary. Resigned to jail time, Alex is shocked when he's framed by these ghostly black-suited figures who pull guns and murder his pal right in front of him. Pleas of innocence are ignored and Alex lands in Furnace. Gangs bully everyone, the food is disgusting slop, bizarre guard dogs tear inmates apart, and boys are arbitrarily dragged away late at night and return as killing automatons. When all seems lost, Alex and his savvy cellmate devise an escape plan. Last minute calamities bring the plan to the brink of disaster, and a cliffhanger ending definitely carries listeners to the next installment. Using a variety of accents, Alex Kalajzic captures the teen's terrors and occasional black humor as well as the guard's monotone menace. Themes of fear and brutality are frequent and descriptions are occasionally visceral, but none of the scenes are gratuitous. Discussions about the consequence of bad choices, loyalty between friends, and prison life are among the topics that spring from this story, but male audiences will find the fast-paced survival saga most appealing. An additional purchase.— Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT
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From Booklist

Positing a near-future backlash against teen crime (and teens in general), Smith sets his series opener in a squalid prison for juvenile offenders built deep underground and patrolled by surgically altered supermen with vicious, skinless dogs. Framed (like a suspicious number of his fellow inmates) for a murder he did not commit, Alex is plunged into a desperate struggle for survival amid constant sirens, lurid lighting, nightmares, gang violence, and terrifying encounters with the prison’s scary guardians. Smith establishes a quick pace with an opening chase described in staccato prose, closes with a convoluted but explosive escape for Alex and a handful of allies, and in between crafts a picture of prison life less raw and hideous than what is found in, for instance, Adam Rapp’s Buffalo Tree (1997), but frightening enough to boost reader interest in sequels. Grades 6-9. --John Peters