hat will England and Europe look like in the year 2025? A devastated barbaric landscape populated by primitive cannibals. What about the United States? Basically the same, save for a few rudimentary outposts of civilization in California and along the Gulf Coast. How about the rest of the world? Well, Russia is ruled by the czar, who heads the state religion as well: worship of Tchernobog, the bloodthirsty peacock god. In Peking, a Japanese emperor holds court over a pan-Asian federation, while Napolean VI rules a displaced French realm from North Africa. Oh, and don't forget the caliph in Damascus or Dom Pedro in Rio de Janeiro. And, most importantly, the mighty Angrezi Raj, the sprawling British Empire ruled from Delhi.
How can this be? Simple: we are inhabiting an alternate timeline, brought into being by one pivotal event. In the year 1878, a series of asteroids impacted Earth, causing what has come to be known as the Fall. The subsequent destruction and chaos—especially the crash of the global food supply under several years without sunlight—wiped the planet clean of hundreds of millions of people. Many survivors turned to a prehistoric, cannibalistic existence. But the supreme power of 1878, the British Empire, managed to continue by transplanting itself to India (certain parts of the globe suffered less than others). Now, 150 later, the world is a brighter place. A flourishing civilization is on the rise again, but its course has been mightily skewed from our path. Giant airships ply the skies, and the horseborne Peshawar Lancers, among others, guard the Raj's frontiers.
Captain Athelstane King, noble member of the Lancers, finds his liberty from combat cut short by an assassination attempt, frustrated in part by his loyal comrade, Narayan Singh. A similar assault on King's sister, Professor Cassandra King, soon follows. Who could be targeting these innocents, who, while notable in their fields, are basically innocuous? Why, none other than the evil Russian spy Count Vladimir Ignatieff, aided by his reluctant slave, Yasmini, a specially bred woman who can literally see possible futures. Ignatieff has targeted the Kings for a special reason: wiping them out will insure that the timeline Ignatieff most desires to reify will come into being. And a horrible future it is.
But Ignatieff has not reckoned with the bravery and resourcefulness of his opponents. Their adventures will take them from the swarming streets of Delhi across dangerous deserts and into the wild territories of Afghanistan, pursued by villainous Thugs and other assailants every step of the way. Only boldness, quick thinking and fighting prowess will insure that goodness triumphs.
King—of the Khyber Rifles redux
Alternate or alternative histories—uchronias or counterfactuals, to employ yet two other terms—have gone through a boom-and-bust cycle lately, accruing both merits and demerits. It is all too easy to fall into several traps and produce substandard books. One snare is to focus too much on celebrities, producing an easy yet overfamiliar cast of characters. Another is to forget to tell a story while busy building your world. And a third is to devise a turning point that's either too complex or too simplistic, making the alternate timelines either too improbable or too much like our own.
S.M. Stirling falls into none of these pitfalls. In fact, his new book is simply the best uchronia in years. Not only is his world fresh and colorful and credible, but his characters are perfectly wrought, and his plot is devilishly captivating. This is a book that demands to be gulped down in one long orgy of adventure and excitement.
Looking at his world-building first, it's hard to fault Stirling anywhere. He picks one simple, quite likely happenstance—the asteroid barrage of 1878—then rigorously and meticulously extrapolates six generations of new history from that fatal occurrence. His reformed British Empire is a genuine syncretism of Western and Oriental cultures, from the modes of dress and customs down to the pidgin language that passes for English. (Several appendices illustrate the depth of Stirling's research.) Moreover, all this strangeness is conveyed without laborious info-dumps. For instance, spotting a royal portrait allows a character gracefully to recall the lineage of the current generation, including the wicked Victoria II. And his extrapolations extend all the way down to such instances as creating a new folk goddess in the Hindu-English pantheon—one who also happens to be a Hollywood movie star!
Stirling does not shy away from employing historical personages in his work. Disraeli, the prime minister during the Fall, has become a literal saint, for example. And of course the horsey-faced Prince Charles is a major player. But the main load of the tale is carried by characters of Stirling's own creation, and they're a fine lot. (Athelstane King and others are actually borrowed from the works of famous pulpster Talbot Mundy, whose 1917 King—of the Khyber Rifles, stands as one of Stirling's inspirations.) The bantering antagonism between Narayan Singh and Ibrahim Khan is but one of the many pleasures here, as are the various love affairs carried on throughout. And Stirling's characters are definitely not just transplants from our own world. They accept daily brutalities we would cringe from, yet are horrified by the prospect of a world war that we have come to take for granted.
Finally, for sheer storytelling power The Peshawar Lancers can't be beat. "Cinematic" is an overused term of literary praise, but it applies most keenly to Stirling's vivid narrative here. The plot moves along at a swift clip, alternating between thoughtful moments and high-tension action scenes. And until you've experienced hand-to-hand combat aboard a flaming dirigible, you haven't really lived.
