Skip to main content

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration, set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact.

In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot that drives along dramatically with a lot more than a few lives at stake. It was one of the most un-put-down-able books I've read in ages.

On top of the police procedural, cultural differences and politicking between the different regions there is also the complexity of a minority cult known as the Fishers who some think are criminals, others peacemakers who are trying to achieve a united island. It's one of their number, nailed to a tree, who is the murder victim that starts it all off. Although I loved the characteristics of the different cultures, they felt a touch stereotyped - all Saxons seemed to live on lumps of venison, for example, while the Celts all still wore torcs. It seemed that the whole country was preserved in cultural aspic. If you think of how much things have changed since, say, 1066 in clothing, hairstyles attitudes over the centuries, these seemed fixed here. Surely they would have changed more over time?

It was also hard to pin down exactly where the divergence from our history was supposed to have occurred. There was no Norman conquest, so that put it pre-1066, but the Christian bible appeared to be the same as is now, putting it after the Council of Rome in 382. However, this was a Britain without a history of Christianity, so this probably puts it before Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597. And what happened to the earlier Celtic Christianity - all forgotten? This is fun speculation if you are into history - but somewhat misses the point of the book, and risks breaking the butterfly on the wheel.

What really makes Pagans is the juxtaposition of the cultural and tribal aspects that hark back 1500 years with smartphones and drones. It's a similar appeal to urban fantasy, where it's the clash between ordinary modern life and magic that has such an impact. In fact I have seen this book described as urban fantasy - but apart from a couple of brief appearances of a mysterious person which may be fantasy element, there is nothing here that deviates from solid, science fiction, alternate history. The book's a delight: read it!

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more