Through the Triangle: 05/02/12

Through the Triangle by CP Stewart has to be the first Bermuda Triangle story I've read or watched since the "New Jersey Parallelogram" episode of The Real Ghostbusters. Given that the cartoon went off air about twenty or so years ago, it was time.

The book starts like a Clive Cussler mystery, with a man committing murder and stealing his victim's identity. That puts him on board a Florida fishing trip. He has plans to kill them and take the ship but he ends up trapped just like they do in an barely recognizable Florida.

The rest of the book is set in this unusual Florida. It has three acts: investigation of the mystery, discovery of danger, and building a new community. The investigation phase is where the initial world building is done as the passengers come ashore and find ways to survive in the ruins. Like Planet of the Apes there are roadmarks left behind from their present day to help piece together their location and how long they might have been gone.

The danger part gives a heavy nod to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine but with it's own Bermuda Triangle twist. The world has people who have been born there, those who have been living there for some number of months or years from their own trip through the triangle, as well as an evolved form of creature with its own sinister history.

My only complaint is that the last part, the building of a new society from the bits and pieces of a once advanced society fallen into ruin is that it's only a few pages compared to the other two parts. It reads more like a hastily written epilog than a satisfying conclusion.

Four stars.

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