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    The Peshawar Lancers
    The Peshawar Lancers
    The Peshawar Lancers
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Peshawar Lancers

    Written by S.M. Stirling

    Narrated by Shaun Grindell

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the mid-1870s, a violent spray of comets hits Earth, decimating cities, erasing shorelines, and changing the world's climate forever. And just as Earth's temperature dropped, so was civilization frozen in time. Instead of advancing technologically, humanity had to piece itself back together . . .

    In the twenty-first century, boats still run on steam, messages arrive by telegraph, and the British Empire, with its capital now in Delhi, controls much of the world. The other major world leader is the Czar of All the Russias. Everyone predicts an eventual, deadly showdown. But no one can predict the role that one man, Captain Athelstane King, reluctant spy and hero, will play . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 14, 2017
    ISBN9781541486669
    The Peshawar Lancers
    Author

    S.M. Stirling

    A well-regarded author of alternate history science-fiction novels, S.M. Stirling has written more than twenty-five books, including acclaimed collaborations with Anne McCaffrey, Jerry Pournelle, and David Drake. His most recent novels are T2: Infiltrator, The Peshawar Lancers, and the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy.

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    Reviews for The Peshawar Lancers

    3.5/5

    175 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a book you should not miss.
    • 4/5
      neat story and good characters
    • 3/5
      My reaction to reading this novel in 2005.Stirling thinks through the consequences of his alternate history. The point of divergence is a series of commentary impacts, mostly in the northern hemisphere, in 1878. American civilization is wiped out. The British Isles are all but denuded of people. Prime Minister Disraeli marshals an exodus of the most important people, cultural knowledge, and technology and sends it to India. France is also wiped out but French culture lives on in Northern Africa. Islam is resurgent across the Middle East and Balkans. Russia has turned into a country of nominal Satan worshippers. Japan and China have combined. The Angrezi Raj, the cultural fusion of British and Indian culture, inherits the British empires (including new outposts in North America.) The exposition is mostly in the first 60 pages of the book in which Stirling throws around a lot Indian/Hindu terms. He gets around to religious issues (basically the Anglican Church has accepted a lot of the Hindu gods and goddesses as versions of the Trinity) later on. To further show off his world building, he has five appendices with the background of the world. The culture is credible, and Stirling certainly makes this version of the British Empire seem noble and appealing with its personal ties of loyalty and honor and an intelligence run along informal lines. Initially, I didn't like my first exposure to seeress Yasmini, whose visions of the future, I thought, brought an unwelcome element of magic to this alternate history. Then Stirling got around to rationalizing using an obvious, if oblique, version of Roger Penrose's idea that the brain is a quantum computer and thus (Penrose doesn't say this) can see alternate timelines. The presence of a Kali cult was to be expected even if they were minor villains allied to the Satanic Peacock Throne. The novel has two faults though neither was enough to disgust me. The reason -- penetration of the Imperial intelligence services so vast that they can not be purged safely without first luring the traitors into the open --why Athelstane King and company have to sneak aboard the dirigible at the end seemed was a bit weak. I think Stirling, understandably, just wanted some scenes on a dirigible. The end of the book descended into a wealth of cliches (presumably taken from the authors Stirling lists in the acknowledgements). There is not only a prince in disguise (the French envoy sent to arrange a marriage turns out to be the French prince who gets himself involved in a lot of combat during the book) but three marriages. The marriage of the French prince and Princess Sita was expected -- after all, that's why the envoy is there, to arrange it. But the marriage of Athelstane King and Yasmini, though hardly unexpected, was that old cliche of adventure plots. Worse was the convenient death of the Emperor and the marriage of scientist Cassandra King and the Crown Prince. All three of the main women characters are of the same improbable action heroine mold beloved of modern authors. Stirling may have a thing for this sort of thing given the character of guerilla leader Skida Thibodeau in Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling's Go Tell the Spartans. I think I was supposed to find the constant insults between King's faithful Sikh Narayan Singh and would be Pathan assassin Ibrahim Khan (who also turns out to be a prince) funny. I didn't mind them, but I usually didn't find them funny.
    • 3/5
      a Ripping yarn, set on the Northwest Frontier of India, but in an alternate history. It moves nicely, but isn't very profound.
    • 2/5
      Yeah, well, the first two thirds were fairly gripping. Went to the well with the prophetess thing too many times, I felt. The ending was rather maudlin, which fairly ruined it for me.
    • 4/5
      In Sterling's Alt history tale at the height of the Victorian era a large meteor strike plunges the northern hemisphere into cold and famine while devastating much of Europe and North America. With England lost the British government relocate to India to reestablish itself and is able to survive. Now 200 years later the British Raj controls much of the world and technology, that had declined after the Fall has reemerged to the late 1800's tech with airships and steam trains as well as difference engines. Although the Raj holds much power it is not the only power in this world the Tsardom of Russia, now followers of a Satanic state religion have started to make stealthy moves to try and fracture the Power of the British and it will fall to Athelsane King to stop them.I really liked the setting the Stirling picked as he does a wonderful job showing how the Britished Amalgimated into the Indian society and adopted any of the customs and language of their new land. Stirling goes into lots of detail about the different culture morphed and changed, as well as didn't change over the last 200 years which really helps the world come alive. However at times I think he went a little too far with the immersion, throwing in Hindi words but forgetting to mention their meaning and expecting the reader to just go with it. Also although the book is called the Peshawar Lancers, the regiment that King is a member of they actually only play a small part in the overall story only really showing up at the end of the book. Of the characters I would have to say that the mercenary Ibrahim as his constant bickering with Kings, Sikh partner Narayan Singh were entertaining The rest of the cast was well fleshed out if a little typical of an adventure story but they get the job done and do have some interesting moments of character growth.Overall the book was a fun alt world adventure tale with dashing heroes and vile villains fighting for the fate of not only the Raj but maybe even the world.
    • 4/5
      This is an intriguing altHistory book, with the bureoning civilisations of Europe and North America destroyed by a series of large meteorite strikes, the survivors in Britain set up a new seat of Empire in India and start rebuilding their Empire. Two hundred years later, the Empire controls half the world but other survivors would see it torn down...
    • 4/5
      A meteor that hits Europe during Victoria's reign, realigns the world of the Peshawar Lancers. Northern Europe becomes nearly uninhabitable so most countries evacuate to warmer climes. Thus the British Raj is the center of the world and the European-begun major powers fight for land amd power across southeast Asia and Africa.I enjoyed the world building and the background and thought it worked well to set up the story. The novel follows a British lord who is serving the Raj in the military and his sister, who is a scientist, and who is working on trying to come up with a steampunky method to predict any future meteor strikes so they can be ready for them.The tale is complicated with lots of intrigue and spies working toward undermining the Raj and also killing the Prince of Wales while they're at it.Lots of action and complications. I especially enjoyed the spunky female scientist who dares to challenge entrenched gender roles.Recommended for those who enjoy alternate history and steampunk.
    • 4/5
      Since alternate history seems to be Stirling’s bent in novels, it is no surprise that this post apocalyptic story of the King family's trouble in the euroindian empire is as riveting as the rest of his work. Now my only wish after reading is for a sequel.
    • 4/5
      An extremely creative alternate history action adventure. The divergence begins in 1878 when a stream of comets strikes the earth, devastating much of the northern hemisphere. The British Empire survives by relocating to the Indian subcontinent, the Russian empire by turning to the leadership of a nihilistic cult-religion -and cannibalism. Fast forward to a quite different late 20th century as "the great game" continues to be play out. Both sides spar in their new home central Asia, as well as in Europe and America where recolonization efforts continue. The center of the story revolves around the English captain Athelstan King and his attempts to unravel a plot targeting not only himself, but his entire family, with dire implications for the Indo-English empire and perhaps the entire world...The novel is a conscious nod to enjoyable old-time adventure fiction a la Edgar Rice Burroughs and Rudyard Kipling. The alternate 20th century world of wood and steam, suffused with Indian influences is thoroughly imaginative and captivating - as it ought to be in a good alternative history novel. If some of the characters seem slightly stock or borrowed from melodrama at times, you don't seem to mind as much given the tone of the book and it's steady stream of action as it builds to an inevitable climax. A quick and enjoyable read. If you like it, be sure to read the novella "Shikari in Galveston", part of the alternative history collection "Worlds That Weren't". It takes place in the same alternate history time line, and involves a number of the same characters.
    • 3/5
      The premise of The Peshawar Lancers is that a shower of comets striking the Northern Hemisphere in the 1870s precipitates a new ice age, a mass die-off of the human race and a mass exodus of many of the survivors (chiefly Western Europeans -- read, British and French) to balmier climes: the British to the jewel in their queen's crown, Innnn-jah, and the French to Northern Africa, where, sacre bleu!, they are all pieds noirs now. As a result of this calamity, technology has pretty much stalled in the Age of Steam, although there are tentative developments in the way of motor cars, while aerial transport -- and aerial warfare -- are high on the list of R&D projects for all the major powers, particularly dirigibles, and astronomers have been making absolutely amazing progress with telescopes in an attempt to scout out any other forthcoming comet storms....Stirling clearly has a love for the Victorian era and the whole "Great Game" bit (the jockeying of Great Britain and Russia for primacy in Central and South Asia in the second half of the 19th century), and The Peshawar Lancers does have a number of Easter eggs (the main character is clearly intended to be a descendant of one of Talbot Mundy's best known characters, Athelstan King, the hero of Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles) sprinkled throughout for devotees of the period, and his four appendices (!) deal with the historical -- and alternate historical -- underpinnings of his novel in a bit more depth than he could in the novel itself; nonetheless, I was faintly disappointed with The Peshawar Lancers, and never escaped the sense that I should've enjoyed it a lot more than I did. This sense of disappointment was not due chiefly to the fact that Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton is name-checked only once (on p. 360 of the mass market paperback edition) -- I swear. A better tweaking of the Victorian era -- and a better example of the "steampunk" sub-genre -- is William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (1991). Still, in my scheme, 3 stars means a book is definitely worth reading, and, given my interests, I most likely will re-read The Peshawar Lancers at least once before I die, Inshallah.