Customer Reviews

The Peshawar Lancers

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Guilty pleasure - thy name is THE PESHAWAR LANCERS.

The first thought that occurs to one after reading this ripping little yarn is that Harry Turtledove now has some serious competition for the title of Alternative History King. A Young Pretender has arrived and it turns out to be a long haired ex-barrister who cut his literary teeth writing up salacious tales of Aryan lesbian dominatrixes hailing from a South Africa that never existed.

In THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, Stirling weaves loads of Kipling, Mundy, and Hobson-Jobson into a throwback tale of a British Empire that never was. A shower of comets strikes the Northern Hemisphere in the fall of 1878, plunging the most advanced half of the globe into a deep freeze for several years. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli gets a quick heads-up on the climatic consequences from scientific advisors led by Lord Kelvin...and before you know it he's managed to use what remains of the Royal Navy and British merchant marine to ship off the the richest and most useful elements of British civilization off to Britannia's southern hemisphere holdings: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and, for Queen and Court and capital, the Raj in India while the rest of Eurasia and North America, save for Japan, a resurgent Arab caliphate and a French remnant fleeing to the Maghreb, plunges into death, canibalism and barbarism. What emerges a century and a half later is a wild and crazy early industrial world where an Indianized Raj still employing steam engines and Martini-Henry rifles now rules half the world from Delhi - setting an exotic stage for adventure that Kipling or Haggard would have thrilled to. The plot itself is a simple confection involving a plucky cavalry captain, a satanic Russian cannibal count, and a plot to destroy a pneumatic computer which holds the key to predicting another Fall. It's not great literature. It *is* ripping good fun.

THE PESHAWAR LANCERS drags in only a few spots, and Stirling's dialogue is never as stilted as Turtledove's tends to be, nor his prose quite as labored as alternative history tends to. The guilty pleasure is made less sinful by by Stirling's success in weaving exhaustive research into a truly fascinating, believable alternative world where the heroes are always manly, the native servants always faithful, the villains always darkly cunning and the maidens always in need of rescuing. Guilty pleasures, as I said; but for those willing, pleasures just the same. The politically correct-minded may not make it past the first chapter and are best advised to stick to Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe. And for those who think Stirling overstates the likely propensity for a transplanted British upper class eventually "going native" into an Anglo-Indian cultural fusion, I recommend William Dalrymple's WHITE MUGHALS as a corrective tonic. It may not be as far-fetched as you think.

Now that THE PESHAWAR LANCERS is available in paperback, you've run out of excuses. Pick up a copy today.

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.

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 Cold
War.

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.

...P>The point of departure of The Peshawar Lancers is the event called the Fall: in 1878, a storm of large meteors, or a comet breaking up (the exact nature of the Fall is still debated a century and a half later) creates a path of devastation in the Northern Hemisphere from Moscow to the Great Lakes. Not only does humanity have to cope with the immediate destruction of falling bodies on land and tsunamis caused by ocean strikes, but enough dust and water is thrown into the atmosphere to cause a volcanic winter (such as followed after the explosion of Tamboura) for several years - the weather is of two kinds, cold and colder.

Europe becomes the haunt of cannibal bands. The Czarist court evacuates to Samarkand, where a mad priest founds the cult of Malik Nous - outright Satan worship, complete with cannibalism and torture as a way of life, and prayers for the final destruction of humanity. A New France is created in Algiers by a Bonapartist officer who puts the Prince Imperial (son of the historical Napoleon III) on the throne. The Japanese and the Arabs see the event as fortunate; despite the untold death and destruction, a reconstituted Caliphate rules from Hungary to Baluchistan, and the Japanese, after their migration to and conquest of China, become the second-greatest power in the world.

Only in England is there any real continuity. Disraeli is informed by his advisers of the effects of theFall on the weather, and organizes an evacuation - the Exodus - of the British upper classes to India, where he is remembered as Saint Disreali (although he is killed and eaten by the mob at the end of the Exodus. After overcoming widespread revolt in India ("the Second Mutiny") and an Afghan invasion, the British refugees are partially assimilated as the sahib-log - ruling folk - of the reconstituted British Empire - the Angrezi Raj. By 2025, the date of the novel, the Raj is greatest power on Earth.

To begin with, the physical and typographic qualities of our copy of The Peshawar Lancers are outstanding. I don't consider this a trivial or sarcastic comment; I've had books fall apart in my hands whilst trying to read them, and read books with so many errors that trying to figure out what the author meant continually distracted me from the story. Neither was the case here.

The Peshawar Lancers has a very strong sense of place. One knows those portions of the Angrezi Raj that the actions of book are set in; you can see them, smell them, feel them in every way. The descriptions are also very convincing; the reader is left saying, "Had there been a Fall and the Exodus, this is how things must have proceeded". Although we of course don't see the 150-year-long transformation of the English refugees into the sahib-log of the Raj, the degree of assimilation at this stage of the process is, to our eyes, natural and expected.

The plot, unfortunately, does not entirely live up to the setting. Dashing officer, loyal retainer, plucky princess, the battles, he kidnapping, a mission to save the world - my wife said, on finishing it, "I know I've read this plot somewhere before" (she also said, "It reads a bit like an Errol Flynn movie", but asked me not mention that). As an action-adventure novel, or an alternate history travelogue, it certainly meets the grade; as a unique vision of a situation, it is lacking. Perhaps so much energy went into devising the background (which, as I say, is complete and convincing) that little of left over for the plot.

One apparently anomalous situation is the numbering of the rulers in the list after the appendices. I would have expected Edward to be numbered Edward VIII, and George IV to instead be numbered George V. This may hint at differences in the pre-Fall world, or it may be mere error on the part of the editor.

Finally, in a return to the physical nature of the book, I may mention the dust jacket photo of Stirling. He's about the same age as I, but much better-looking. This seems to be a quality of authors; I got Steve Brust's Issola at the same time as The Peshawar Lancers, and the same is true of Brust (although he has the unfair advantage of being Hungarian). I can only conclude that either my own appearance will be much improved if I ever write anything that is published, or that my hopes for a literary career have finally been dashed.

S. M. Sterling evokes Rudyard Kipling, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling in this delightful alternate history view of a revived British Empire in the aftermath of a series of devestating cometary impacts on late 19th Century Earth. Comparing Stirling to Rudyard Kipling and other writers of Imperial Raj fiction seems most apt, since this novel is essentially an early 21st Century recounting of the "Great Game" played between the Russian and British empires over Afghanistan and much of Central Asia in the 19th century. I find Stirling's alternative future quite plausible, if I overlook his comet impact scenario for destroying most of Western European and North American civilization.

Sure, some of Stirling's characters do come across occasionally as wooden or stilted, but the main protagonist, Captain Athelstane King, is a memorable character who could have been created by Kipling too. And yet to Stirling's credit, he engages the reader with ample doses of riveting action and fine dialogue that you tend to overlook some of the book's disappointments.

Stirling's alternate history is yet another fine example of the steampunk genre created by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in their novel "The Difference Engine". However, it lacks the graceful, almost lyrical, prose found in that novel; yet another of this book's disappointments. Still, Stirling has created a riveting future history that I hope will be the source of future novels.

The Peshawar Lancers is not part of a series at this time, but leaves enough unexplained aspects of the culture to support other novels. It is much more upbeat than the dysutopian Draka series, but does contain a small echo of that society in the Cape Viceroyalty. It also echoes somewhat both the General and Islander series. Unlike the Flashman stories, all the cowards in this novel are villains or dupes.

In the mid-1870s, a "violent spray of comets" has rendered the European climate unsuitable for agriculture. England has moved much of her population to India to take advantage of the remaining croplands. Technology has not advanced much beyond the prior level and has even regressed in many areas. Air travel exists by means of dirigibles and rail travel by steam locomotive. The navy is still using steam powered ironclads and the army still has lancers. Vehicle engines have advanced only as far as the Sterling cycle. Biology and analytic engines, however, have advanced significantly.

The social climate is somewhat more flexible than the Victorian era, although there are still many who think women should remain in the home, and King John II does not think it odd that women are working scientists. One woman, Cassandra King, is an astronomer working on a project to detect possible colliding objects. She has accompanied a 34 inch mirror back to Oxford, the university city, where armed men attack her associates and attempt to destroy the reflector.

Her brother Athelstane, a Captain of the Peshawar Lancers, has just returned from a punitive raid over the Khyber Pass and is asked to meet with a Political Officer, Sir Manfred Warburton, who introduces him to Colonel Henri de Vascogne of the Empire of Algiers and France. Warburton also conducts a fairly thorough examination of his knowledge and attitudes. Returning from his meeting, Athelstane is attacked by a Thug.

Later, Cassandra and Athelstane meet Warburton in Delhi. Thus starts an adventure story in the tradition of Kim, but with modern overtones.

This story is densely twined within the culture of the Indian subcontinent; it portrays the people, customs, and language in a realistic and culturally consistent manner. Even the British Imperium is true to Victorian society intermingled with the British Raj, with some advances both social and technological. Although the British Empire is less sophisticated in many ways than contemporary society, it is much richer in the traditions of the Indian and neighboring peoples. Like the India of Kipling's time, this society is rampant with violence and intrigue, but with even higher stakes.

Stirling makes this story come alive with a people faced with disaster, but carrying on as best they can, while also trying to improve their society. He draws his heroes and heroines from many ethnic and social backgrounds and uses them to introduce the many facets of this culture; his villains are also well developed even if not treated sympathetically. Recommended for those who like exotic locales, intelligent and courageous characters, and high adventure.

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.

This is the third alternative history Stirling has developed. In The Peshawar Lancers, the key divergence from our history occurs in the late 19th century when a cometary or asteroidal impact destroys most of Europe and North America. The resulting nuclear winter type of event causes global famine and depopulation of the Northern Hemisphere. Great Britain is intially partially spared and the British Empire is able to reconstitute itself by moving the center of the British state to India. The result is a hybrid European-Indian Empire spanning much of the globe. This book is essentially an attempt to use a conventional adventure story to display this alternative world. Stirling does a really good job of developing his alternative history. The Anglo-Indian society is not just a mechanical articulation of colonial India but a real hybrid with a new form of English, hybrid social structure, and interesting politics. This world, however, is more interesting than the plot Stirling develops to drive the novel forward. The story and characters are not all that interesting though I suspect that this is partly the result of Stirling's efforts to emulate Edwardian romances. This book is definitely worth reading for Stirling's imaginative use of his historic material but I recommend waiting for the less expensive paperback editions.

Mr. Stirling follows up his "Islanders" series with another outstanding "alternate" history novel. Set in an universe in which the Northern Hemisphere is largely destroyed by a series of comet strikes this book has great character development, a nice twisty plot, a writing style that has elements of Kipling and Doyle, and fast moving action. What else could one ask of a novel? As you turn the last page you wish there was more to the book or that the sequel was immediately at hand.

If you like a very well written adventure, buy this book.

This is the sort of story that a Brit (or Canadian) writes when he throws off the yoke of political correctness and unabashedly wallows in the glory of his mythic imperial heritage. It is also great fun. In this very detailed and believably crafted alternate history the British Empire never faded away. Instead it was forced to fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world (multiple comet strikes in 1878 caused tidal waves and years of never-ending winter in the northern hemisphere.) In fact, I cannot help but wonder if the annihilation of both the United States and most of the continental powers doesn't represent a secret wish fulfillment in some Britons...

In any case, Victoria and her court, along with the top ten thousand families and their essential servants relocate to India. There they establish themselves as the true ruling caste in residence (much as the Moghul dynasty before them.) They slowly begin to merge with their new home thru constant contact and intermarriage with the upper castes. They speak Hindi as well, or better, than English. In fact, the tendency is to call on Krishna instead of Christ in a pinch.

The real action of our story is in the year 2025. The Empire, or Angrezi Raj, has finally clawed its way up beyond pre-Fall conditions. There are some interesting alterations such as electric arc lamps but no incandescent bulbs, and advanced steam engines but no internal combustion engines. Yet, they have developed practical giant airships (Sterling cycle hot air engines), as well as, massive difference engines (mechanical computers.)

It is in this world that Captain Athelstane King, his family and their faithful family retainers defend the Empire. They defend it against the Czar and his dark empire. While the British fled to the south during the never-ending winter of the Fall the Russians stayed put. They turned to cannibalism to survive (of non-Russian slaves.) In fact, long after it ceased to be a necessity, they kept the practice as a sacrament in their Black Church. Of course there are also more traditional enemies- the Caliph in Syria and the Mikado in Japan and China. You even have Afghan raiders and Thug cult murderers.

All in all, it is a good, rousing, old fashion adventure yarn- even if it is set in the future.

I only have one little nit picking, irritating complaint with the book. Both Metford rifles and Webley revolvers are mentioned- neither of these were developed until the 1880's.