The System is a universe of alternate realities that captures Outsiders and creates System characters to populate its venues. It challenges its victims to adapt, endure, and survive disparate adventures from benign to evil. Three University of Maryland graduates--Courtney, Macy, and Devon--get a firsthand look at it as they travel across Canada sightseeing and looking for summer jobs. before starting careers in the US in the Fall. But the world went crazy!
The three women entered a Victorian living museum town in eastern Canada, were robbed, and took jobs in the local hotel. They began to suspect they had entered a science fiction movie. Three women detectives, veteran captives of The System, asked the new victims to collaborate in investigating a potential bank robber. They informed the women that they had entered an alternative reality called The System. Courtney became romantically involved with the criminal and remained on the case until she and the detectives were trapped by the robbers in Vancouver. Devon was separated from the others in central Canada and saved three children from a murderous logger who chased them and attacked her in a mortuary. Macy ended up in a fishing village on Hudson Bay where she tried to prevent another System captive from breaking the rules and profiting by selling plans for future inventions. The System created a storm of retribution.
Courtney, Macy, and Devon reunited in a broken-down car in Nebraska, entered a carnival to seek help, were plagued and taunted by sinister characters, rescued by a System deus ex machina who whisked them into a Temple (a kind of portal between venues). The three women emerged in gold-rush era central Canada where they joined three System characters, were kidnapped, escaped, rescued from rapids, courted by natives, and almost rescued by townsfolk. The three women awoke in Tokyo as FBI agents partnered with shape-shifters chasing a thief to other planets and through the Dimensions. Then in St. Petersburg they worked as under-cover CIA agents to expose espionage in the consulate.
They went to sleep in The House of Storms, current residence of four veterans of The System and awoke in pre-historic Texas where they encountered four very early captives of the System who had gone native. A rival tribe enslaved the group to build a huge city in a desert canyon. They escaped through the navel of the earth through a creation legend. The four veterans from The House of Storms struggled to escape Maoists in northwest China, joining eight Chinese fugitives and traveling overland and by stolen boat, dodging the pursuing People's Liberation Army.
Courtney, Devon, Macy, and their boyfriends met up with the four House of Storms residents for dim sum in Hong Kong. The final scene is of the four House of Storms veterans in their new residence overlooking a lava pool in pre-historic Hawaii pondering their mantra: Love is the most important reality.
Throughout this book and the entire series, recurrent themes are What is the nature of reality? What is The System? What is its purpose?
Fans of such science fiction as Matrix, Quantum Leap, the Prisoner and alternate realities will enjoy the challenges and quandries presented by The House of Storms and other books in the Blue Plane series.