Rating: 
Summary: Fun and Engrossing
Review: The Peshawar Lancers is a fun book that I couldn't put down. In addition to being a great story, it is another great example of the skill with which S.M. Stirling builds a fictional world that seems very real.Following the massive devastation of the The Fall, the British Empire relocated as much as possible to India, where the climate was at least marginally livable. But what is shown here is far more than just the British Empire with airships and babbage engines, it is a society transformed in subtle ways. The characters all think of themselves as Imperials, but India has changed their society as much or more than it has changed India. But the book is not a slow tour of the Raj, it is a high speed adventure. Deliberately it has a lot of the flavor of a late 19th century tale of "The Great Game" between the British Empire and the Czar's empire, but it is a rather different sort of Russia that they are dealing with.
Rating: 
Summary: For readers who relish a 21st century Victorian age tale
Review: In 1878, comets strike the earth broadside. The debris in the atmosphere causes a seemingly endless winter while the oceans flood the coasts. The civilizations of the Northern Hemisphere collapse. English Prime Minister Disraeili and Queen Victoria lead a mass migration to the Indian subcontinent.
In 2025 the world contains two superpowers and several other smaller empires struggling for global domination. The Angrezi Raj, as the British Empire is now known, centers in Delhi, India. It primarily vies with the Russias for supremacy. Though the empire includes numerous races and religions, most live in harmony with one another, but the world as a whole is as dangerous as it ever has been.
Two independent assaults occur on twins Peshawar Lancer Athelstane King and astronomer Cassandra King. Neither understands why someone would want them dead, but another attempt occurs. Based on the vision of a true dreamer, Russian Count Vladimir Ignatieff has foretold that the deaths of the Kings would begin the end of the British Empire. However, Athelstane will not sit idly by and just wait for his assassin to succeed.
THE PESHAWAR LANCERS is vivid detailed look at the late nineteenth century Indian subcontinent. The story line is deep and provides much insight, but fans of alternate history must understand that the plot reads more like a Victorian historical novel than a rewriting of history leading to a different future. SM Stirling shows his ability to paint quite a vivid tale of intrigue that will excite historical novel readers and those alternate history aficionados who relish a twenty-first century Victorian age. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Great alternate history/future adventure tale
Review: I'm a fan of alternate history books and this is one of the best. It's set in the near future but depends heavily on an alternate 19th century in which the Northern Hemisphere has been devastated by a comet or asteroid strike and the dominant power in the world is now the British Empire transplanted to India. Technology has developed more slowly, society has hardly developed at all, and geo-political intrigue swirls among Russia, Dai-Nippon, France-outre-Mer, and the Empire. There are touches of speculation about parallel universes and alternate time strands, too.
The characters are based on familiar stereotypes but have been given their own individual quirks. Though not complex, they are engaging and memeorable. The book assumes a continuing racialism in the Empire that I didn't read as advocacy but a part of the plot line; however, some might find it disturbing.
The ingenious plot catches the reader up in the action and keeps the pages turning. Some of it is predictable, but part of the pleasure of the book is its unique take on the action/adventure genre, which just IS predictable.
The author's meticulously detailed descriptions provide a vividly realized setting in a believable alternate India. He has gone to some trouble to think out linguistic, social, religious, economic, and military implications of a destroyed Europe and relocated Western civilization - for those who get confused in the beginning of the book, feel free to turn to the appendices to orient yourself, though I didn't read them until I finished.
A good read which I highly recommend - and yes, the title is a bit inaccurate, but nevertheless serves as a nice tag for the book's premise and plot.
Rating:
Summary: Great, great, throwback fun
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great alternate history/future adventure tale
Review: I'm a fan of alternate history books and this is one of the best. It's set in the near future but depends heavily on an alternate 19th century in which the Northern Hemisphere has been devastated by a comet or asteroid strike and the dominant power in the world is now the British Empire transplanted to India. Technology has developed more slowly, society has hardly developed at all, and geo-political intrigue swirls among Russia, Dai-Nippon, France-outre-Mer, and the Empire. There are touches of speculation about parallel universes and alternate time strands, too.
The characters are based on familiar stereotypes but have been given their own individual quirks. Though not complex, they are engaging and memeorable. The book assumes a continuing racialism in the Empire that I didn't read as advocacy but a part of the plot line; however, some might find it disturbing.
The ingenious plot catches the reader up in the action and keeps the pages turning. Some of it is predictable, but part of the pleasure of the book is its unique take on the action/adventure genre, which just IS predictable.
The author's meticulously detailed descriptions provide a vividly realized setting in a believable alternate India. He has gone to some trouble to think out linguistic, social, religious, economic, and military implications of a destroyed Europe and relocated Western civilization - for those who get confused in the beginning of the book, feel free to turn to the appendices to orient yourself, though I didn't read them until I finished.
A good read which I highly recommend - and yes, the title is a bit inaccurate, but nevertheless serves as a nice tag for the book's premise and plot.
Rating: 
Summary: Very predictable, yet it is a new idea
Review: The charecters are unbelivable, yet some are likeable
The plot is old-hat but parts of it are interesting.
I really don't know what to think. Mr. Striling seems to have written this book just so he could have something to do between the "Islands in a Sea of Time" serise. I really tried with this book, I tried to like it and enjoy it but in the end I just couldn't get into it. I think it would have helped if half of the book had been set before the catachlism and half of the book after the catachlism. It would have longer but in the end I feel it would have made muchg more sense. The hardest part for me while reading a book, epecially one dealing with Alternate History is accepting the events are happening. Just being thrown into this new world and being told "O.K this is whats going on", just doesn't cut it for me. Overall-I guess what i'm trying to say is that while I liked the story I think the author could have gone a lot more in depth with it.
Rating:
Summary: Lyric Style, Engaging Characters, Great Story
Review: This is the most refreshing book I have read in awhile. I could be accused of just being one of those people who love the whole "British Raj" milieu (which is not true other than some old Errol Flynn movies), but I found the writing in this book to be elegant, the characters to be people I really cared about, and the story to be engrossing. I have found some of Stirling's other works to be somewhat turgid, much like most of Turtledove's tripe, but this story was light on it feet (with just the right dash and swagger) and engaging. I liked that he created both strong male and (at least one) female characters and emphasized the special nature of camaraderie. I highly recommend this book and will now have to go digging after something else this good. The last such book, for me, was Across The Nightingale Floor...
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