Execution: Escape from Furnace 5
The fifth and final episode of this pornographically violent series brings chemically and surgically altered teen superkiller Alex face-to-face at last with hyperevil kingpin Alfred Furnace as humanity (which is to say Britain) fights a losing battle against Furnace’s army of maddened and deadly mutant children. Following a near-continual barrage of explicitly described bloodbaths and atrocities, Smith engineers a perfunctory happy ending, but his main intent is plainly to leave even those readers who glory in immersing themselves in staccato, gore-splashed prose a little queasy. In this, he succeeds admirably. Grades 6-9. --John Peters