Trapped

Trapped returns to a primitive Earth, set off from the main League of Peoples setting. The plot is a rousing adventure, as five teachers at a school go off on a quest to find a missing student, and run into criminals, powerful Spark Lords, and a god-like alien. The main plot is fun enough, a light hearted raconteur with your standard D&D party that soon turns into a bloodbath. The narrator, Philemon Abu Dhubhai, and his fellow teachers, are well drawn as caring people all too aware of the smallness of their lives against their ambitions. Having been called on, they give it their all.

What I didn’t like was the implications for the setting. Earth has become infested by magic, a shell of alien nanites that can be manipulated by lucky and trained adepts. There’s a dramatic increase in power from the smart doors of the third book, or the intelligent clouds of the fifth. Nanotech can and will do anything. The main plot revolves around an alien called a Lucifer, a nanite hivemind that has gone insane and is being rehabilitated by the Spark Lords, which I just could not bring myself to care about.