Trapped

Philemon Abu Dhubhai is a teacher at a second tier private school. As we find out from a bar fight they get themselves into at the beginning, he and his close friends (also teachers at the school) are all extraordinary in some way. One friend is telekinetic and can lift someone off the ground without touching them. Another is a sorceress who has a tendency to carry her pet flame around with her. A third thinks that he is a knight. A fourth is a street fighting nun. Philemon himself is fabulously wealthy; at least his family is. Although he has tried to distance himself from them, his relatives make sure his wallet is always full. Coming home from the bar, Philemon witnesses a ghost in the music room. Fearing foul play, he finds one of his students is, indeed, dead - possibly murdered. Since the sorceress had already shared a prophecy that they must all go on an upcoming quest together, he gathers his friends together to solve the mystery. This is the first book by this author that I've read, and I found the setting intriguing. The mixture of old technology with fictional abilities such as sorcery and telekinesis grabbed my attention immediately. The author is able to keep sharing new information about the outlandish setting and unusual characters in a comfortable conversational style that spreads the explanations throughout the narrative without engaging in the massive infodumps that mar so many other authors' prose. Events flow logically and inevitably through to a final confrontation that has grown to have galactic consequences. The clear and vivid language evokes the action and surroundings without bogging the story down in detail. At first, I was surprised that the book hasn't scored any better than the four stars. I think, to a certain extent, it is because it was poorly aimed. The cover looks like a juvenile or young adult book and, indeed, the fun style that the book is written in and the fast pace of events would seem to reinforce that. In contrast, the relatively dark ending (only half of the main characters survive the story) and the existential angsting that the point-of-view character engages in, may deflect the interest of younger readers. I would highly recommend it to older readers.

James Alan Gardener has become one of my favorite Fantasy authors. Engaging characters, cool aliens, interesting situations, and knowing plots kept me 100% into this one.Though there are no explorers in this one, there is a lot of fun in this book.

Trapped (2002) is another SF novel set in the League of People universe. Although an Explorer is a minor character, this novel is unrelated to the Explorer stories. This story takes place on an Earth that has been embargoed by the League and seeded with nanotech to emulate magic and psionics. Some people are endowed with telepathy, telekinesis, precognosis, envoking fire, and other powers, but most only have a single talent. The most powerful of these talented people are the Spark Lords. The novel tells of a quest to find the murderer of Rosalind, a student at Feliss Academy. Her killer is a Lucifer, a unit of a hive mind species, who can shapechange and has impersonated Rosalind so as to elope with her lover, Sebastian Shores, who is himself a multi-talented sorcerer. Philemon Abu Dhubhai and his friends are teachers at FA, a somewhat elite finishing school for those with a touch of sorcerous talent, and all are feeling a bit underachieved. The quest gives them a reason to go out and fulfill themselves. Along the way they are joined by Phil's lover and friend, Gretchen Kinnderboom, who fancies herself as a sorceress. The FA group aren't the only people interested in the murder; Dreamsinger, a Sorcery-Lord of Spark, is also investigating a strange occurence and joins the group for a while. Elizabeth Tzekich, head of the Ring of Knives criminal gang and mother of the murdered girl, is discovered to be in the vicinity and, upon being notified of the death, is most eager to follow the murderer. Phil and his friends discover that the Lucifer has already killed another Spark Lord and apparently has a different nature than other Lucifers. As they follow Dreamsinger and the Tzekich party, they discover death, deception and, possibly, deliverance. This story takes some suspension of disbelief, since it is basically a fantasy with a scientific premise. Like other crossover stories, it has to do some fancy smoke blowing to establish the groundrules, but it succeeds fairly well in bypassing the critical faculties and engaging the sense of wonder. Like his previous works, the novel displays Gardner's innovation and characterization within a fairly plebian plot. It isn't War and Peace, but it is interesting. I enjoyed it and the other Gardner novels. -Arthur W. Jordin

I've read all of the League of People series by James Alan Gardner and I have to admit that this one is certainly the best written, clearest, and most detailed. I was most impressed by the fact that Mr. Gardner finally figured out that to emphasize something, he doesn't have to repeat it three three three times. Instead, the novel is full of excellent descriptions of a post-technology era, where horse-drawn carriages are pulled on 500 year old highways with giant potholes and the main way of communication is mail by land.However, there are flaws in this novel. I think the primary flaw is the desperate need for tying this novel into the League of People plot. It would really make a better book to create a whole new universe explaining the agency to protect earth to be controlled by SOME extraterrestials, but not necessarily the League of People. Sure, the plot twists were great, however, throughout the whole book I felt they were unnecessary. Also, on a personal note, I would've preferred much more (or even some) space travel, but between the aliens and the magic, I can't complain too much.I don't want to spoil too much for the reader, but the basic premise for the story is a quest that the characters take in order to save a highly powerful psychic able to perform tasks from telekinesis to mind-reading. They embark on a journey: a fighter, a cleric, a mage, a thief, and a rich guy. Sounds a bit too much like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign? Maybe. But the result is worth reading. The technology Mr. Gardner puts in the novel mixes very well with the late Middle Ages feel of the everyday life of the characters. The aliens, as always, are very well-developed, with their quirks and features barely or not at all understood by humans. There is suspense and mystery and a great cosmic puzzle to be solved. Fans of Mr. Gardner will be delighted, and those new to his writing, since the novel is very detached from the others, will become addicted.

Imagine a world without computers, cars, airplanes or manufacturing. This is not a place in Earth's past but in its future. Four centuries ago, civilization collapsed forcing the League of Peoples to send in the Spark lords, a policing agency of the League to make sure the planet is salvageable. People use horses and sails as the main means of transportation and for light, kerosene lamps are used.When the Spark Lords arrived, they used genetic engineering to make one person in every thousand psionic. Phil Abu Dhubhai, a teacher at Feliss University learns from his psychic friend that he and four others are going on a quest. An alien who can assume any disguise has made off with Sebastian the most powerful psionic student the world has ever known. Phil and company must stop the evil alien from letting loose an evil entity upon the earth with Sebastian's mind fogged up.TRAPPED is a witty, cutting-edge science fiction adventure novel satirizing "Arthurian" novels. This novel could have easily have taken place in the middle ages as in the year 2457. The high tech touches that are interspersed through the story line are used to remind readers that earth has reverted to pre-industrial revolution times although the inhabitants know what they have lost and don't seem to miss it. James Alan Gardner is a talent who comes along very rarely. This reviewer is going to find and read his backlist.Harriet Klausner