 So, Escape from Furnace, or just Furnace, as I believe it's called in the United Kingdom, uh, this is a really great series. I read it years and years ago, and I haven't really thought about it or talked about it all that much in the time since. However, sometime last year I made that video on, like, the top ten action scenes in books, which flopped really hard. Uh, but there is a comment on there somewhere where somebody was saying that they wish I would talk more about Escape from Furnace because that was one of the entries on the list. And I just was thinking about that for a little while and I thought, you know what? Yeah, let's just make a video about it. This isn't really a, um, review so much as just why I like this series. Uh, so there will be spoilers in such a head. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Before that, do I recommend it? Um, I don't know because it is at the end of the day for a younger audience and I don't know how much a lot of the stuff that happens here will really appeal to, uh, excuse me, older readers. But at the same time, it is really dark even while it is for a younger audience and there are a lot of fun twists and it's weird and, well, unpredictable I think is a good word for it. Like, I genuinely had no idea where the story was going most of the time I was reading and there's a lot of sequences in there that are just really cool and really fun. So if that sounds like something that might interest you then go ahead and check it out. But anyways, here we go. So Escape from Furnace is split into five books. There's a lockdown, solitary, death sentence, fugitives, and execution. And they're all pretty short too. Like, even combined, the whole series isn't that long. And it starts with the main character, whose name is Alex, being arrested and sent to Furnace Prison for a crime he didn't commit. In this case, it was murdering one of his friends. And this is actually a pretty common trope in, well, just a lot of different genres. Like the main character either being sent to prison or somehow punished for a crime they didn't commit. And the reason they do that is usually to make sure that the main character and the story by extension is not morally complex. Like they just wanted to be like, no, no, they're a good person. They didn't do anything wrong. They're just being sent here because the bad people made it look like they did something wrong. And in this case, they kind of avoid that because Alex, yeah, he didn't murder his friend, but he is still an awful person. Like, he's a little shit. He is a thief who breaks into people's houses and steals stuff. And he's not doing this because he's like homeless and starving or anything like that. He's doing it just because he wants money and that's the easiest way to do it. And it was only because he was doing this that he was able to be framed in the first place. So this is kind of his own fault in a roundabout way. And British authors have this way of creating main characters who are really terrible people. Like they're just awful little shits, like particularly British children's authors, I mean, and they're just awful little shits, but then they put them into such horrible situations that you still feel really bad for them and you still want to see them escape and you still want to see them get out of this. Okay. And Alex is just another example of that. Like, he is a horrible person, but he doesn't deserve what's happening to him. And over the course of the story, he does become much better. Like, for example, there's a scene in the first book where another couple of kids are about to commit suicide and Alex manages to save one of them. And he, well, without going into too much detail, he manages to convince him like, hey, there's hope. There's light at the end of the tunnel. We can keep going. If you die, then that's it. And, you know, it's moments like that that show, okay, he is a decent person. And I think that is part of what makes Alex as well as a bunch of other characters in a similar vein work is that even though they're shitty people, there's like a little nugget of good buried underneath all of that. And we can kind of see it from the beginning of the story. My only real issue looking back on it is that Alex becomes nice a little too quickly. Like, he seems to realize like, okay, you know what? Life is hard enough. I don't need to be making it harder for other people. And also, we just need to work together to get out of this, which it just happens a little too quick is my thing. Like, it goes from Alex being a little thieving shit at the beginning to Alex just being a decent kid in a shitty situation very quickly. And I don't know, just looking back, I feel like if the series had been longer at the very least, you could maybe have explored his transformation a bit more. But, you know, that's not to say it's bad or that he's a bad character or anything like that. Now, Furnace Prison itself is absolutely horrible. It was built some point in the future. We don't know exactly when this book series takes place, but it is sometime in the future. And Furnace Prison is mostly underground. Like, there's a small entrance building and then the rest of it is just tunneled into the rock. And the prisoners are hardly fed. The guards abuse and kill them pretty frequently. There are weird creatures roaming around, which sometimes just eat them. And the prisoners also work on like, expanding the prison, digging more tunnels and stuff, and the conditions that are horrible. They get injured and die all the time. And so this is obviously a really terrible prison. And it's allowed for two big reasons. One, it seems pretty clear that there's no news about Furnace getting out. Like, the general public knows it's bad and you don't want to get sent there, but they don't know the specifics about it. Like, Alex is really surprised when he gets there and sees how bad it is. And two, it's also very heavily implied that the government and police and justice system and all that are considerably more authoritarian and draconian than they used to be. And they don't go into a lot of detail as to why it's left kind of vague, but they do talk a little bit about how Furnace got set up because there was a big crime wave and stuff. So it's not super realistic. And you think, okay, there's no way this would happen today. But then you realize, okay, it's like, in the future, it's a terrible dystopia. And pretty early on in the story, Alex, you know, makes a couple of friends with other prisoners and they just decide, you know what, I'm not spending my life here, we're going to escape or we're going to die trying. And that is the plot of not the entire series, because the series basically changes genres halfway through. But it is the plot of the first couple of books, at least. And there are a lot of kids books and even some young adult books, which are about escaping like evil boarding schools. You know, you know what I mean? Like there's a boarding school and either it's just terrible because the headmasters are mean or maybe there's some sort of supernatural threat going on, which is the case in Furnace, even if it doesn't seem clear right at the beginning, you pretty quickly figure out, okay, yes, there's something going on here. You just don't know exactly what until much later. But you know, there's evil schools and the kids have to escape. Like if you want a more modern example of this, the promise Neverland, but the first season of that is just basically this, there were a lot of kids books like this. And there was like a sub genre of that sub genre, where instead of being at a boarding school, they were at prison, you know, or some sort of prison. This was usually either done in a dystopian way, where it's the future and it's some sort of horrible science fiction prison, or it was done in a fantasy way where it's like a magical prison in a fantasy world or something like that. But this is basically, it's the darker edgier cousin of the boarding school state stories is how I would describe it. And one thing that shocked me when I first read these books many years ago is that it's a lot grimmer than I was used to at the time. Like it's a lot grimmer than most other books aimed at kids this age, you know, it's dark, people get injured and die horribly in very painful ways pretty frequently throughout this series. And both good guys and bad guys, like people who are again just kids in many cases and didn't really deserve what happened to them. But that's just that there's nothing you could do about it. And the tension throughout this whole series is really, really high, because you know that if they get caught trying to escape, it's death. They're done. They're fucked. There's no getting out of that. At least it seems so at first. And so the whole main crew of the first book at least, the people who are trying to escape, they run the gamut from kids who were innocently framed, kind of like Alex, to kids that did things that were bad, but probably don't deserve to be down here to just outright cold blooded murderers who maybe do deserve to be down here. But they all just have to work together and they all want to escape. And it just works pretty well, you know, it's the sort of crew you would expect to see in like a heist story or an escape story or something like that. Now near the end of the book, one of the crew members is taken from his cell and dragged off by the guards, which is just a thing that happens sometimes, like guards. The guards in this, they call them black suits. They are almost human, but it seems pretty clear from the beginning that they're not. They're like massive, they're like seven feet tall, and they're just inhumanly strong. Like they can bend metal bars and stuff. And so one, it works great because it makes this whole place seem more dangerous, which is, you know, nice in a story like this. But two, it also makes it clear, okay, there's something weird going on. But anyways, the guards also walk around with like these weird scientists wearing gas masks, and sometimes they will just drag prisoners out of their cells and take them off somewhere and no one ever sees them again. And it becomes pretty clear early on that like the mutated creatures that we see around the prison were actually created from the prisoners. And one of the main crew gets dragged off like this near the end. So it's clear that like, even if they just stuck around and kept their heads down and just decided to stay in prison the rest of their lives, they wouldn't be safe. Like, there is no real escape other than, well, escape. I probably could have word that better, but whatever. So basically, their big plan to escape is, like I said, they have to do work details, digging tunnels and stuff. And they also do work to details working in the kitchen. And their plan is basically to take the gas from the stove and fill up a whole bunch of rubber gloves with it, and then just stack them up against a wall in the tunnel over the course of days. And then they are going to blow it up. And hopefully they can run out and find a way out. And it's desperate. It's not very safe. But it's the only plan they got. And at the end of the first book, they managed to do it. They blow it up. And one of them actually gets his spine broken by rocks in the fall. And they hear there's a river going down somewhere. And they're like, well, we either jump in and maybe escape or we just stay here and wait to die. So they all jump in, including the guy who his legs don't work anymore because his spine is broken. And that's it. That's how book one ends. This is a hell of a cliffhanger. And it made me want to read the next book immediately. So, you know, it did its job, basically. Like, this whole series is very good at making you want to know what happens next. It's very good at throwing in a bunch of unpredictable twists and making you feel like, okay, yes, even though these characters aren't the best people, they don't deserve what's happening to them, I want them to escape. And then so book two mostly takes place in the tunnels and the caves around the prison, not entirely, but mostly. And as soon as it starts off, the kid who had his back broken is dead. Like, when they jumped in, they lost their hold on him and he drowned. And like, well, sometimes I hate to just say sucks to suck, because, well, that sounds a little callous, but that is the best way I can put that. And sort of the mindset that the series has is like, yeah, sometimes people just die and there's nothing you can do about it, which is great because even if Alex, the main character, doesn't seem like he's in mortal danger all that often, all of his friends are constantly dying and constantly getting hurt and being replaced by new people, which might sound kind of annoying, but nah, it doesn't. They all get a little bit of time to shine and even the people that come in later do get some characterization and some personality. So basically, it just makes this whole thing feel much more dangerous and much more tense, which is great. The thing I mainly love about the second book is just how claustrophobic it feels and how much solitude the main characters seem to be in, because like they can't go back into the prison, obviously, and they also don't have a way out right away. They're just trying to go through the tunnels, trying to get enough food and water to, you know, live, trying to get some light so they can actually see, like just things like that. It works really, really well to make it, maybe horror isn't the right word for it, but it does make it feel really scary and tense, and it works great. And while they're out, they meet some other escapies who are mutated, because they, like I said, all the prisoners here are used as lab rats and sometimes it just doesn't affect them the same way, so they can have like one really big arm that's really strong and then the rest of them is normal or something like that, you know. We also learned that this is how they make the guards, you know, the guards started off as regular kids and they did a whole bunch of weird experiments on them, pumped them full of chemicals, brainwashed them, etc., and then they turned into these giant monstrosities that are willing to do whatever the warden tells them. And the warden is kind of a distant presence for most of this, like his name is Warden Cross, by the way, and I feel like they should have focused on him a bit more, because he works well as an intimidating presence, but he doesn't do a whole lot in the first couple of books, and he's also largely playing second fiddle to the person who created the prison, who was Alfred Furness, and we'll get more into him later, but he's like the big villain and then the warden is, you know, he's there and he does his job well. I just wish he had gotten some more screen time, which I will talk about a little bit more, but anyways, Alex and company, you know, they wander around the tunnels, they look for some ways out, some more people die, Alex gets captured and put in solitary confinement for a while, but he manages to talk to his friends by banging on pipes and so on and so forth, and basically they realize that, hey, all these people die and their bodies don't get taken up, they just get cremated down here, which means there has to be a chimney leading to the surface, and they, so they go to the furnace where all the bodies are burned and they try climbing up, but while they're partway up there, they turn the furnace on and the smoke almost suffocates them and they all fall and then they get captured again, and that's the end of book two. So again, all of these end in such a way where you're like immediately wanting to know what happens next. Book three can be summed up pretty cleanly, it's just the book where Alex becomes a black suit, he gets turned into one of the guards, basically, he gets pumped full of this liquid which they call nectar, which it seems pretty clearly supernatural from the beginning, and he also gets brainwashed a bunch to like get rid of his sense of empathy and try and make him forget who he used to be, and he gets forced to kill one of his friends from before, and that's kind of what snaps him back to reality and makes him realize, wait, whoa, no, I don't want to be here, I want to escape, and basically he breaks out his other friends and then they all go into Gen Pop with the rest of the prisoners and they manage to just start an uprising, and this is the best part of the series in my opinion, because one, it's where that giant action scene comes, which is still to this day one of the best I've read, which I've mentioned before, I won't go into too much detail, but it's amazing, and this whole part is, like I said, just the best part of the series in my opinion, not that before or after is bad, but they manage to throw out the guards and everything and barricade themselves in this area, but they aren't able to escape to the surface yet, like there's a big elevator which takes them directly there, but they are not able to open it quite yet, and they realize, okay, we just need to buy ourselves enough time to get that open and then we're good, so they fight off like waves of guards and creatures that they send in to try and kill them, and again, it's unpleasant, people die, eventually they send in like the most powerful nectar made creatures that they have, which they just call berserkers, and we get the great action scene, like I mentioned, Alex manages to barely defeat the berserkers and they rip open the elevator doors and suddenly the way out is free, so they all flee to the surface and they scatter to the winds and they start running, and at this point I was a little confused because I thought like the whole series was going to be them trying to get out, but from this point forward that's where the genre shifts because it's no longer about like just trying to escape, it's more about trying to fight and defeat Alfred Furness, and as he's fleeing Alex can hear his voice in his head because Alfred Furness has some sort of telepathic hold on everyone and everything that was made with the nectar, and like I said, we never find out exactly what's going on there, or rather we do find it out, but it's not super clear, again we'll get to that in a minute, but it's just weird, okay, so when the hundreds of prisoners all run off and escape into the English countryside, or maybe not countryside, but they they escape into England and start running around, you would think that the majority of the book would be about like police and guards and such hunting them down, but no actually at this point Alfred Furness for whatever reason releases a whole bunch of the nectar creatures that he created and they are also rampaging around, so we have them attacking regular people, we have like the army and civilians trying to defend themselves and the main heroes are also trying to run away and trying to stay away from the authorities, while also trying to fight for their lives against these creatures, and they also make this like weird nectar with crimson flakes in it as they describe it, and that makes it contagious, it's like a plague, so the creatures will like bite people and then they'll get turned into them, and it's not zombie apocalypse, don't worry, but it does have some similarities there and just like the whole world is falling, or not the whole world, but this whole area is falling apart, and they're in a city, I don't believe they ever specify which city it is, but you know again it's somewhere in England and it's just being destroyed and that's where most of the book takes place, so at first Alex and company are just running, they're just trying to escape, but Alfred Furness keeps getting into his head and it makes it seem like he wants Alex to become his new lieutenant, his new right-hand man to rule over the new fatherland as they call it, so it seems like Furness is just trying to take over either Great Britain or the entire world or something and just rule over it as some sort of god or godlike being, because at this stage we still really don't know much about the nature of Alfred Furness or what all this is or how he's doing it, we just know that he's doing it and he wants power, and so eventually they decide okay we're not going to be safe while he's there, so they attack Furness Tower, which is somewhere in the city and they think they're about to run into him, but then they run into the Warden instead and then he has a big fight with Alex and well like I said before, the Warden was a pretty effective villain, you know he's not the main bad guy, but he is like the face of the main bad guy, but then the problem is that he also needs his own face, which is like the guards and such, so he's, I don't know how to explain it, like he is a good villain, he does work extremely well as this looming threat, but then when Alex like physically fights him the fact that he's so powerful is a little odd to me, and honestly I wish that the Warden and Alfred Furness had been merged into one person because after this we don't really have a main villain anymore, and book five it takes a drop in quality in terms of that, because that's the end of book four and then we finally get to the last one, execution, which yeah like I just said it's not great, it's a you know there's some time passing where again the creatures are rampaging and excuse me destroying all kinds of stuff, and suddenly the army are the villains, like yeah at the beginning of the book Alex and some of the others are being experimented on by army doctors, they're like trying to study them and trying to study the nectar in order to find out like ways to fight these creatures and such, and then one of the like the head doctor is just evil for for some reason, and they just decide you know what we're gonna try and kill you Alex, so he runs off again and eventually him and his friends find a furnace who is hiding on an island somewhere, and over the course of this we learn like the origins of this weird power, and it's not super clear like I said, but basically from what I can gather there is some sort of evil magic being carried in Alfred Furness's blood, and he he's like more of a host for it than he is using it himself, like it's some sort of like evil god or magical being or something, which after Alfred Furness was killed hundreds or thousands of years ago he just kind of merged with that magical god or evil being or whatever it is, and the nectar is not his blood but it is derived from his blood, and that's about all we learn from that, but we do know that he actually doesn't want to rule over everything with Alex as his lieutenant, he actually wanted to use like the nectar and everything to create someone who could eventually take on his blood and take on this magical creature thing which wound up being Alex, you know he was the one that was able to take the nectar without dying or he's not the only one that was able to take the nectar without dying, but he's the one who was able to take the nectar and still maintain his sense of self and he got injected with like the crimson nectar later too and he still survived and like he's the one, he's not the chosen one, but he is the one that Alfred Furness decides like okay you're gonna take my blood and I'm finally gonna be able to die, so that's what happens, Alex takes his blood and then Alfred Furness immediately dies and then the evil presence seems like it's gonna take over Alex, but he manages to keep a sense of self and then like the evil army doctor whose name I don't even care about shows up and she's like hey I want all this power give me your blood and he's like okay whatever and he gives her his blood and she's not able to take it so she dies and presumably the evil presence also dies with her. Again this last bit is both anticlimactic and not super well explained which is the main reason why the last book just doesn't work all that well and at the very end Alex is going into surgery he's gonna become human again and you may be wondering like where his parents and family were in in all of this and they barely have a role but after Alex escapes the prison he goes back to his old house and he finds out that his parents kept trying to get his sentence appealed and kept trying to get him out of there even while he wasn't hearing from them so that is kind of nice and gives him some sense of closure but they're pretty almost certainly dead based on all the chaos that's going around. So yeah it's a great series does not quite stick the landing unfortunately but hey I still look back on it pretty fondly. Now I mostly look back on the earlier books fondly because the later ones well having a genre shift isn't bad but the main issues I have are again the stuff with Alfred Furness has never explained super well and it also does feel weird given the aesthetic of the series up until that point you know we weren't really talking about magic or evil gods or anything and now all of a sudden here it is but at the same time in the first couple books when it's just focused on escape the story is very focused and has a very clear goal and that works extremely well whereas afterwards it's it's not bad or hard to follow but it just has fewer standout moments that I really remember like you know when I was going over these old books in order to jog my memory and remember what's going on I remembered a lot more stuff from the first couple than from the last couple but anyways the really focused simple characters combined with the really focused simple plot work great and all of the insanity that branches off of that just makes it 10 times better like it's almost a Darren Shan-esque in a way like if you've never read Darren Shan he is really good but I just I don't know how else to describe it really like the these books are a lot of fun they are just absolutely nuts and I know this isn't like a deep dive review type thing but that's not really what the point of this video was I just kind of wanted to talk about what made it good and why I liked it and obviously I threw in some criticisms in there but overall yeah escape from furnace if you still want to read it after hearing about some of the weird shit that goes on in there and you already know how the story ends then I guess check it out but overall yeah I I do really enjoy this bye huge thank you to everyone who watched this far I'm sure everyone who's leaving a comment telling me to kill myself definitely made sure to watch the whole video so thanks to them as well and all the names you see on screen right now these are my patrons so thanks especially to my super ultra great patrons who are Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotis, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Dio, Echo, Eevee, Flax, Great Griebo, Carcat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Matthew Bodro, Microphone, Peep the Toad, Return of Cardamom, Robbie Reviews, Sad Martigan, Celia the Vixen, Tesla Shark, Vaivixus, Vaivictus, and Wesley I'm not I'm not redoing that I don't even care if you want to get your name on here be sure to join my Patreon page if you can't do that then please just write this video and comment on it subscribe all the things I'm supposed to say here um uh thank thank you goodbye