'...dozens of conspiracy theories here, all stirred up together. And I don’t mean “The Pan-Africans never went to the moon” stuff, there’s mad stuff: wifi summoning dark elves, the Wall being a big hologram put up by the Norse, the High Table tracking agitators by putting microchips in their honeycakes—’
‘I happen to believe in that one,’ said Aedith, her face solemn. [loc. 2270]
The setting is modern London -- but London the capital of the Kingdom of England, in a Britain that is classed (in the Pan-African Collective Intelligence Services Factsheet) as a 'developing nation'. This is a world where the Norman Conquest never happened; where there's more of an East/West than a North/South divide in Britain; where Celts, Saxons and the Norse maintain an uneasy peace, with a Unification Summit about every five years; and where there are vapes, phone games, disaffected youths making music out of right-wing rhetoric, and warpaint for sale in the supermarket.
Pagans begins when a prominent Celtic negotiator is found gruesomely murdered, on the eve of the latest Unification Summit, by a Nigerian couple on honeymoon. (They've eschewed 'native guides' to wander into the primeval woodland of Epping Forest, where they discover a tattooed Celt leaning against a tree, then realise that that's real blood.) Aedith Mercia, daughter of Earl-Elector Lod Mercia, is a Detective Captain at the Woden's Cross Station. When the victim is identified, she has to work with Detective Inspector Drustan, a Celt who is more than he initially seems, to establish a motive and avert a diplomatic crisis. And she'll have to step on a lot of toes to do it.
The worldbuilding is superb. The Pan-African Unified States, the Mughals and the European Islamic Caliphate are this world's superpowers; the Nordic Economic Union, the Tsarist Conglomerate, the Han and the North American First Nations are also mentioned. Britain, meanwhile, gets Mughal students on their gap year building playgrounds, and the poor wear castoffs donated by Pan-Africans 'to help starving whites through the long cold winters'. Britain was never a colonial power, but a quarter of the Metropolitan Police Force (including Aedith's sergeant, an avid player of 'the game where you walk around collecting sacred creatures') is of African descent. While religion doesn't play a major role in Aedith's life, Drustan's faith is important to him -- and there seems to be a murderer hunting down followers of an obscure monotheist cult known as the Fishers.
I enjoyed this a great deal: it reminded me in some respects of Cahokia Jazz, though here the alternate history encompasses the whole world. (Maps here -- the versions in the Kindle edition are rather small...) The police-procedural aspect is soundly constructed, the characterisation is great, and the style is immensely readable. I'm looking forward to the next in what I hope will be a long series.
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