Sixteen-year-old Archibald Zwick is vacationing with his family on a remote island in the Bermuda archipelago. Almost immediately on arrival, he takes his kayak out into the open ocean, where he soon becomes caught in a freak storm and is left disoriented and alone, not knowing where he is or how to get back. When fatigue and fear have almost caused him to lose hope, he comes upon a mysterious city inhabited by a strange but friendly people. Archie, however, wants only to return to his parents, something that the inhabitants of this mysterious city seem unable or unwilling to help him do. Instead, Archie becomes the center of a struggle that plunges the city into a deadly civil war, and he finds that his own fate is inextricably linked to that of his strange new world. Will Archie ever find his way back to his parents and his home? And are there clues in the city's eight towers that will point the way home? Join young Archibald Zwick in this epic battle of good versus evil.