The Rig

Gr 7 Up—Although only 15, Will Drake has escaped from three of the roughest juvenile prisons on Earth. Now he is sent to the Rig, a "rehabilitation facility" in an old oil rig in the middle of the Arctic Ocean that holds some of the most violent juvenile offenders in the world. The Rig is operated by the Alliance, an enormously powerful global institution that runs the world in sinister, shadowy ways. Drake is determined to escape, but besides being in the middle of an ocean, he also has another problem: the GPS tracker strapped to his arm. And what about those glowing lights in the ocean? And where exactly do some of the rougher boys disappear to for days on end? There is definitely more to the Rig than meets the eye. Drake and his friends are realistically flawed characters. Although they are all convicted criminals, readers will root for them. The young convicts who work as the villains' henchmen tend to be rather one-note characters, but the true villains are the warden and the prison guards, and they are wonderfully complex and evil. While the ending sets things up for a series, the book is satisfying on its own.