Retro Book Review: THE PESHAWAR LANCERS (2002), (Virtual) Appearances, BATTLE Discount
A book I last read (entirely) in high school or early college gets another look, an appearance on a horror-themed YouTube, discounts, and a new show!
When I was in high school, probably in the summer of 2000 or 2001, I first learned about S.M. Stirling via his Draka series. Once I read the omnibus The Domination, I read several of his other books, including The Peshawar Lancers, a Kipling-esque tale set in a 21st Century British Empire centered in India after a comet devastates Europe and the Americas in 1878. I recently re-read the first six chapters on his website and decided to finish the book.
So how did it hold up? Let’s see…
(Oh, the days of fully-illustrated book covers that actually show what the book is about rather than the fractal-looking graphic-design crap.)
Full Disclosure: I’m actually an administrator of Stirling’s fan group on Facebook, and he signed a bunch of his books for me one year at DragonCon.
The Plot
Athelstane King, a sahib-log (Anglo) officer in the Peshawar Lancers, is returning from a punitive expedition against Afghan raiders when he’s tag-teamed by a group of Thuggee and suicidal Shia Muslim fanatics — a most unlikely alliance. Although his longtime Sikh shield-brother Narayan Singh saves his life, his Indian mistress is killed. He’s soon attacked by the Pashtun warrior Ibrahim Khan and learns the Okhrana — the secret police of a Satanist Russian empire centered in Samarkand that practices ritual cannibalism — has put a substantial price on his head.
(Though the world is greatly changed, the Anglo-Russian Great Game still goes on.)
And Athelstane and his twin sister Cassandra are not the first generation of Kings the Okhrana has tried to kill. What follows is a tale of swashbuckling and skullduggery with literally the fate of the world at stake.
The Good
*The book is a fast-moving and entertaining read, as befitting an action-adventure tale.
*When dealing with an alternate history or more elaborately-built worlds in general, exposition is always a tricky thing. This world’s Russian Empire controls a group of psychic women and one, through a vision she has of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in snowbound London not long after the comet struck, manages to provide the back-story of the Fall in a very interesting “show don’t tell” kind of way.
*The Russians’ use of blackmail, misinformation, and various other techniques of manipulation (more on that below) is very timely given recent events. Given how totally dysfunctional Satanist-Cannibal-Russia’s society sounds, prolonged wars against peer competitors like the Raj or Dai-Nippon seem…problematic…but manipulating everybody and their dog seems more doable. This applies to both the micro-level (the plot against the King family) and the macro (the Czar’s broader international schemes, revealed later).
*There’s a whole subplot involving the use of blackmail to force people to spy (more on how that process works can be found in this essay by David Brin) and different interrogation techniques that rings true to this War on Terror-era essay I read in a college class on magazine article writing.
*That leads me to my next point — the work shows the amount of research Stirling did. It’s incredibly detailed and I’m impressed. The descriptions of things like Babbage Engines and dirigibles are very vivid.
*The worldbuilding is expressed in ways both great (the descriptions of cool stuff that exists only in this world) and small, like how people speak. The increasingly Indianized sahib-log use “by the ten thousand faces of God” as an exclamation, reflecting Hinduism’s pluralism, while the French survivors in their North African redoubt refer to Jesus as “the Merciful and Compassionate” like how Muslims refer to Allah. Australians, whose language sticks very close to Victorian English, claim not to understand Hindi when arguing with sahib-log.
*Like the Draka books, there are some very interesting appendices that help build the world. Having worldbuilding appendices is something I recommended for a friend’s novel and I could use myself…
The Bad
*There is a lot of description of food. Considering this is a completely different culture than those most readers likely belong to that’s more forgivable than in some of his later works. Fortunately it doesn’t reach the level the band Paul and Storm mocks in George R.R. Martin’s work — “six-page descriptions of every last meal.”
*There’s a scene where a Japanese admiral defeated in a border skirmish with the Raj is referenced as having made “a final apology to the Emperor” — ritual suicide — as though it was a commonplace thing for a defeated officer, even though the situation was explicitly described as not the admiral’s fault. The propensity of the WWII Japanese military (and that of many civilians) to kill themselves in the face of defeat (culminating in the horror show on Okinawa you can read about here) emerged due to a very specific series of historical circumstances in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, circumstances that wouldn’t exist in this world. Seppuku was actually outlawed early in the Meiji Restoration (nine years before the comet impact) and only started making a returning after the Russo-Japanese War decades later. It frankly seems kind of cliche.
*Per the above, an Anglo villain (no more detail for spoiler reasons) is snooty toward “natives” in a way that sounds more appropriate for our world’s British Raj. The exiled British have become Indianized to the point they find eating beef instinctively revolting — their snobbery would be more based on class and Indian caste rather than 19th Century ideas about race.
*From the glimpses we get of Russian society, one wonders how it could even function for a prolonged period. To be fair some of it comes from someone brought up in the absolute worst part of said society and other parts come from someone brought up in a society hostile toward Russia (and with justified personal beef to boot) so it might just be the POV characters’ biases.
*There are no less than three romantic subplots. Although two seemed fine to me, the third involved (from one of the two characters more so than the other) “telling” rather than showing how the relationship develops.
*There are some typos here and there.
The Verdict
A solid B+, and I wish there were more stories in this setting. Although Stirling seems to have moved on from this world, there’s a novella called “A Shikari In Galveston.” Check out the prologue and first chapter (the full novella is published in the 2003 Worlds That Weren’t collection) at Stirling’s website here.
YouTube and Podcast Appearances
In late January I appeared on a horror-themed YouTube channel. Check out my discussion with host Travis Bruce about the state of indie publishing, Kickstarters, audio-books, and more.
I’m also on this episode of The Blasters and Blades Podcast about adapting comics into films. Definitely check out The Rocketeer, also known as evidence one can make a good superhero movie without spending half a billion dollars.
Battle for the Wastelands Discount Running for the Next Week
As part of an independent-book promotion plan with British author M.S. Olney, I have set my novel Battle for the Wastelands to $0.99 US (and its UK equivalent) on Amazon US and Amazon UK. The discount began earlier today and will continue until April 12.
So if you want to start a new steampunk military fantasy series with less financial outlay, here’s your chance.
(Incidentally The Peshawar Lancers and To Turn The Tide, the newest book by S.M. Stirling, show up in Battle’s also-boughts on Amazon.)
Vending, Speaking at StellarFest in Duluth Today (Saturday) and Tomorrow (Sunday)
StellarFest is a new scifi-focused convention taking place this weekend in at Sonesta Gwinnett Place in Duluth, GA. It’s run by the same people as CONJuration, where many of you have gotten to know me already. I sold four books and got several new subscribers — including a paying one — at my vending table near the information booth Friday night.
I’ll be on panels at that show as well as vending. The show already has recruited a number of guests — the actresses who played Judy Robinson in Lost in Space and the Salt Vampire in the original Star Trek as well as the actor who played young Spock in Star Trek III.
Here are my panels:
Droid Sentience, Saturday at 2 PM: In this one we discuss which sci-fi robots are truly thinking beings. I’m inclined to think the Star Wars droids, the 2000s Battlestar Galactica Cylons, and the Terminators are at that level, but we’ll see about the other panelists’ opinions and other properties.
Penning Aliens, Saturday at 10AM: How aliens fit into science fiction and even fantasy. This is in the Science and Literature room near the information booth. This is in the Other Worlds Two room near the dealers’ hall.
Second Tier Scifi, 1980s Edition, Sunday at 4 PM: I’m on this panel’s waiting list, since there were six panelists as of 3/19. Given my experience with the film podcast Myopia Movies, I’d be a pretty good addition. I’m particularly interested in The Last Starfighter, Abyss (although that was too smart and had too high production values to be a B-Movie), and Leviathan. This is in the Other Worlds One room near the dealers’ hall. If I don’t get a spot on the panel, I might go anyway — at this point the vending will be done.
Come on down!