The Peshawar Lancers: Difference between revisions

* [[Colony Drop]]: The Fall

* {{spoiler|[[Deus Sex Machina]]: Yasmini's ''only'' means to preserve her sanity involves some quality time with Athelstane.}}

* [[Disney Villain Death]]: {{spoiler|Count Ignatieff is stabbed by Athelstane and thrown from a zeppelin, and is described as splattering when he hits the ground.}}

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: the cult of Malik Nous in the remains of Russia worships one and believes {{spoiler|bringing about the destruction of humanity will please him}}

* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: A reader could be forgiven for thinking the book is an RPG transcript; Athelstane and co. have to deal with attacks from devil-worshippers, Afghans, ninjas, Thugee, bandits, white supremacists and air pirates!

** {{spoiler|And practically all of them were bribed/manipulated/set up by Count Ignatieff.}}

* [[Expy]]: The Kapenaar (Anglo-Afrikaner South Africans) are essentially [[The Draka|Draka]] if the British managed to restrain them. With the added touch of them being the only ones left wearing Pith helmets. They're even called the "Bad boys" of the Empire by Stirling himself.

* [[Feudal Future]]: It's more of a Victorian [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]

** Brazil-dominated South America is filled with caudillos-of-the-month.

** As for North America, it's the Wild West mixed with neo-barbarians (along with Mormon enclaves).

** [[The Hero]]: Athelstane

** [[The Lancer]]: Narayan Singh (with elements of [[The Big Guy]])

** With the Russian, it turns into [[As Long As It Sounds Foreign]]: Stirling can't make up his mind whether to write the Russian phonetically or as a straight transliteration. The result is a garbled mixture between the two.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: Sita's bodyguard and {{spoiler|King-Emperor John}}.

* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: Yasmini's precognition tells her the precise direction to point her gun and the exact moment to squeeze the trigger. She's got her eyes closed as she does.

* [[In Spite of a Nail]]: Australians, Afghans, Jews and Brazilians are implied to be more or less recognizable.

** A number of real life figures still show up, such as L. Ron Hubbard (as an American tribal in the prequel) and Prince Charles.

* [[Waif Fu]]: Yasmini doesn't actually beat up men much larger than her with her bare hands, but she is more than capable in combat despite being, well, waifishly small (she poses as a 12-year-old at one point). Partly because her psychic powers let her know, without looking, exactly where to point a gun and when to pull the trigger.

* {{spoiler|[[Weddings for Everyone]]: Athelstane and Yasmini, Charles and Cassandra, Henri and Sita}}

* [[The Wise Prince]]: Charles (who's implied to be the ''OTL'' Prince Charles).

* [[The Woobie]]: Yasmini was born and raised as a slave of an apocalyptic death-cult, gets dragged around India by the main villain who treats her like dirt, fully expects to start going mad and then be forcibly 'bred', and has increasingly unpleasant fainting fits and bouts of waking dreams as the story progresses. Couple that with her frequently remarked upon exotic beauty and you have the literary equivalent of a [[Moe|Moeblob]].