Terminus

According to the author, Peter Clines, he's hanging up the Threshold universe for now with the conclusion of Terminus. That's probably a good idea. Though I still enjoyed the read, of the four books in the Threshold series, I think this is the weakest. I read 14, the first book, some time ago and Terminus references that book a lot and in fact uses one of the main characters from that book in the story. My memory is hazy about the details of 14 so I always was left thinking I should reread the book to clear up a lot of what was taking place in Terminus, but nah. This time the boundary between perceived reality and a Lovecraftian nightmare reality is centered on a small uncharted island about a thousand miles from Madagascar. Like the apartment building/machine in 14 there is another such building on the island, but the machine is beginning to fail and the boundary between worlds is weakening, allowing creatures from the nightmare world to cross over. What's even worse, a cult of semi-mutated people, touched by “The Great Old Ones” and led by a beautiful but deadly zealot, is heading to the island to destroy the machine and make sure the boundary comes completely down, giving “The Great Old Ones” they worship free rain to destroy. With all the action taking place inside and outside the building, as I got nearer the big finish I found the story became confusing trying to distinguish between which reality the characters were actually in. I guess it was the Albuquerque Door effect, a reference to the second book, The Fold. And, on top of all that cloning plays a part in the story as it relates to a particular character. IMHO it didn't need to be in this story and it and the character could have been jettisoned for something more satisfying. Oh, and why do we never learn if the bright green cockroaches do anything but hang around the Threshold boundary areas?

Terminus by Peter Clines

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Peter Clines has been turning out some wonderful page-turning books in a variety of subgenres. One of those takes into a world of Lovecraftian horrors, including huge, flying, eternally-hungry, bat-winged, tentacle-faced, humanoid-looking “squales.” Clines is usually craft about unleashing these Cthulhu-inspired monsters on the reader until later in the book, so be on the lookout for green cockroaches with extra arms to flag that you are in his horror universe.

This book is the third book in what is now a loose-knit “trilogy.” His first book was “14” which involved a “Winchester Mystery House” apartment complex that introduced a handful of characters, the Family of the Red Death, doors into an alternate Earth cleaned out by the squales and the green cockroaches. The second was the fold which started out as a science fiction teleportation story but moved into Lovecraft horror territory after an engaging build-up. These two stories weren't connected except by the overall universe including the cockroaches (and I've come to realize, a character named “Anne,” who features as an easily overlooked background character.)

This is the third installment of the collection. This one starts with a “Lost” like set-up where the main character, Chase, is a passenger on a freighter. Chase and another passenger are taken to an island with some crew members to get them off the freighter during a storm to avoid insurance issues. The “storm” turns out to be a squale and the island appears to be the location of a second “machine” like that in “14” and the Family has landed on the island with a kidnapped character from “14” to lead them to the building on this lost island.

And the island has green cockroaches and the three-armed overseers we met in “14.”

And squales are loose in the world.

Unlike the other stories that were leisurely in building up the weirdness and tension, this story launches quickly into the riveting advenure nearly immediately and does not let up. Sometimes it's hard to follow what's happening in what reality, but that doesn't detract from the engaging plotting and characters.

This is a stand-alone book, but it reads better as the third in this “series.” The reader just gets a lot more enjoyment by understanding who the characters are and the background of the story, as well as the satisfaction of having some of the mysteries from “14” solved.

For me, I read “14” back in 2012 and “The Fold” in 2017, so I forgot a lot of details, which made this like a new reading experience, but also frustrated me because I wanted to go back and see the points that I had forgotten from the previous book.

I recommend that the new reader start with “14,” continue with “The Fold,” and move on to this one. The good news for new readers is that they won't have to wait nearly a decade to get answers to “14.”