The Peshawar Lancers

Another ingenious alternate history novel from Steve Stirling. He throws in a fascinating amalgam of 19th century Britain and India. Along the way, you get to learn a bunch of Indian words and, at least I did, salivate over the food descriptions.The basic premise is that of a comet almost destroying the world, via many years of dust being thrown into the upper atmosphere, and inducing harsh winters. Plus of course the massive tidal waves from the comet's impact. He draws on recent scientific work on mass extinctions of the dinosaurs, and the nuclear winter hypothesis that arose in the last years of the ColdWar.Patriotic American readers may not be thrilled by Stirling's scenario. What is left of the United States is populated by howling savages. And the British Raj lays nominal claim to North America. Though it barely bothers to enforce it, so irrelevant is the region. As if the American Revolution never happened. Europeans may not feel any better. There are cannibals on the Rhine, and what is left of French culture huddles along North Africa. The British Empire has decamped to India, with the aristocrats merging into the Indian upper castes. The bad fellas are cannibalistic Russians, worshipping the demon god Chernobog. This is the only unfortunate aspect of the novel. The evil doers are totally cardboard. The crux of the actions happen in Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of our Pakistan. The battle scenes are written with Stirling's usual flair in such matters. Plus, of course, his signature description of the rural landscape. Those of you who have read his General or Nantucket series will recognise this.He has clearly positioned this as the start of a new series, given the amount of careful research he has done. Comparable, perhaps, to that which he put into the Bronze Age for the Nantucket series. We have much to look forward to.

A great book with an exciting tale from a new world of alternative history. And in this world the usual happens: handsome hero - officer, of course - with his loyal armsman, sinister plot, evil magic, damsel in distress, noble sister, charming prince, martyred king ... . It is India as imagined by Kipling and others. But then it is a somewhat different world - alternative history at its best. The scenario of the cosmic impact that almost destroys civilisation in 1878 and forces Britain's elites to seek survival and continuation of their rule in India is credible and plausible. It is also well crafted and described in the book's excellent annex.A strange world, with no Otto- but Stirling-motors; airships but no aeroplanes and no computers but just one big mechanical calculator - the pride of the Empire ... . Oh, and the world is saved by one - later all - of the Peshawar Lancers ...S.M. Stirling has repeated the stroke of genius he already had by creating his Islander-series. I just hope that he'll continue the storyline of this book in a similar way - with other heroes and places from this strange new world.

I think that it was Coleridge who coined the phrase, "a willful suspension of disbelief", which is, in my mind, what it takes to enjoy good fiction. Readers with imagination and the ability to "suspend" are going to love this book. It makes no pretentions of being other than what it it is, a really good adventure story, replete with sword fights; manly heroes who admit and enjoy their vices; tough, but still feminine heroines, who are excellent shots, and really BAD bad guys. Author Stirling acknowledges inspiration from such former great adventure writers as Burroughs, Sabatini and Talbot Mundy, whose "King of the Khyber Rifles" features as its main character, one Athelstan King. Lancers' featured character is Athelstane King, but Stirling's fast moving plot is very different from that of Mundy. Placed in alternative history following a global disaster caused by meteors hitting Earth in Victorian times, King and his friends battle to save the remains of the British Empire, now centered in India from the machinations of an evil Russian agent and his minions. If you are looking for serious, New York Times' approved fiction, save your money. But if you, like me, really enjoy a well conceived and crafted, fast paced adventure story, you will not be disappointed. Don't start it, though, unless you have time to read it from cover to cover. Once you are "into" Mr. Stirling's world, you won't want to come home again until the story is finished. This book only needs two things: first, a sequel, and, second, a good (as in GOOD) movie version.

The Peshawar Lancers is an very good story of alternate history. Although there is one particular premise I disagree with, everything else has been spot on. I won't call it flawless, but there's a lot to criticise about Shakespere too. I will say that I was very pleased with the book and don't regret the days of harrassing bookstore clerks with "Is it here yet?"To the poster who said he was tired of Mr. Stirling's "racist totalitarianism" - The Domination is a dystopia, you twit! Go bother George Orwell over his lust for a police state.

S.M. Stirling's latest foray into alternate history is one with a rather inspired premise: after Europe and America are bombarded with comets in 1878, the British Empire must pick up its scattered pieces and reclocate to India. Now, a hundred and fifty years later, the new Britanno-Indian Empire struggles its way through 21st Century politics. While some of it reminds me of the early chapters of Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo-nominated "Darwinia", "The Peshawar Lancers" shares much thematically with Stirling's "Islander" saga: Western culture gets rocked back on its heels, but ultimately struggles and survives in a world that it has unintentionally changed.Stirling has given a great deal of attention to his world - and it shows. Especially interesting in their own alternate-historical merit are the five appendices at the end of the book that deal with the events of the cometary impact, the British Exodus to India, the state of the world and the British Empire and the level of science and technology in his world of 2025. He has given thought to all of the major players in a world that seems almost more like Asia of the 1920s than the 2020s, but every country comes off as believable and most fall within what I could even see as plausible - given a little dramatic license, of course.The story itself is a great deal of fun, too. The main character, Athelstane King, is an Imperial Army captain, a young manor lord and a reluctant conscript into his Majesty's service following the uncovering of a conspiracy by the Russian Czar in Samarkand. The story follows him, his armsman, his sister, an Afghan assassin, the Imperial Heir-Apparent and a Algerio-French emissary through Bzyantine plots and a very-well-realized Imperial India. It deals out action, romance, culture and history in equal measure and does so in a way that never drags or lectures.My reservations about the book (and I have one or two) are relatively minor and deal mainly with personal differences in interpretation than complete implausibility. Having recently flipped through David Cannadine's "Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire", I find myself wondering if even in the necessity of survival, whether or not the British fleeing to India would have 'gone native' to the extent they have in Stirling's book. Certainly, the intergration of British and Indian culture makes for an interesting story and Stirling certainly researched the dynamics of Indian culture well, but I find it a point that I wish I could agree more fully with. Likewise (and this is an even less important point), I question his portrayal of Dai-Nippon (Greater Japan) a bit. As with India, he has certainly studied the culture and history of Japan, but I am not entirely certain how well he has acquainted himself with the attitudes of the times. Given the Japanese propensity for technological innovation and the fact that in 1878 Japan was coming out of a civil war and seriously looking to compete with Western po