Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but not his best work
Review: Peshawar Lancers isn't Stirlings best work. The premise is a fascinating one: a cometary impact starts a new ice age in the Northenr hemisphere in the 1870s and the British empire relocates to India. Stirling devotes his usual impecable detail to creating a large and robust world for his characters to play in, but the characters themselves are largely bland and the story is a few twists and turns short of a great adventure yarn. THere are also some plausibility problems with some of the elements of the world he has created (the villains are satan worshipping canibalistic Russians who have survived intact in Central Asia). I'd recommend it for Stirling completists or fans of pulp adventure fiction, but it's not a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Saved by the Peshawar Lancers
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Rousing Good Adventure Story!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as the Island Series...
Review: This book has a facinating premise, artful use of culture, entertaining plot, but like a Russian novel tends to get bogged down with the number of minor characters who tend to run together. I think that if the author had provides a cast of characters as well as a list of commonly used Indian/Pashtun phrases with their English translations, it would have been a better read.
Rating:
Summary: Oh those awful Russians!
Review: S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is a thumping good read in the best Kiplingesque tradition. Brave English officers, loyal Indians, beautiful and clever ladies and a touch of the psycic powers - all well handled. And the background premise, the earth in the aftermath of a comet strike in Victorian times is well done. But, the villians! Czarist Russians as devil-worshiping cannibals is a bit too much.
I could not help but wonder if Stirling was more inspired by the over-the-top diabolist Rasputin in the otherwise excellent animated movie Anastasia than by the historical "great game" of the Victorian Era.
As I say, a good read, but not up to this author's supurb "Islander" series or his excellent villians in the "Draka" novels. Eugene S. Erdahl
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite. Not even close.
Review: The thing I admire most about S.M. Stirling is his thoroughness. Most of the time he thinks through the implications of what he writes, considers the consequences, and comes up with a self-consistent enjoyable novel. The Islander series was a gem in that regard. Peshwar Lancers falls so far short that it hardly seems to have been written by the same man. It's obvious that Stirling was deep in his Kipling and visions of Imperial Glory were dancing so manically in his head that he didn't have time to think through anything. The British had time to evacuate their islands and set up shop in India. But America has become nothing but a howling wasteland peopled by savages. A mini-Ice Age has caused the Russians to give up the Orthodox Church, embrace Yazidism and set up shop in fer-Crissakes Central Asia (which would be just as cold and inhospitable). The Japanese, never forced out of their isolation by Perry and teh Black Ships have inexplicably conquered most of Asia. Inexplicably until one remembers that Victorian England was gaga for its fellow Imperials safely half a world away. This book is simply self-indulgence of the worst sort. An unworthy effort by someone who is capable of so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After reading his Island trilogy, I was disappointed by this effort.
It seemed juvenile and simplistic. I reminded of the movies serials I watched as a child. The characters were two dimensional and uninteresting.
I expect more from this author.
Rating:
Summary: A Brief Review
Review: ...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.
Rating:
Summary: Tells of one man's pivotal role in changing his world
Review: Fans of alternative history science fiction stories will delight in S.M. Stirling's Peshwar Lancers, set in the mid-1870s and telling of comets which hit earth, change the world's climate, and transform civilization. This tells of one man's pivotal role in changing his world.
Rating:
Summary: When the Rudyards cease from kipling...
Review: Stirling is an enjoyable writer of alternative history, and _The Peshawar Lancers_, while not his best work, is thoroughly enjoyable. Stirling has produced a pastiche British imperial era adventure story, with echoes of Kipling and Haggard, and a tribute to Poul Anderson (to whom the book is dedicated) in the form of a nice bit of lifting from one of Anderson's "Time Patrol" stories. His vision of India is Kiplingesque, though he does not have Kipling's ability to breathe depth into his characters (at least in this story), and the echoes of _Kim_ here and there are delightful.
|
