History YMMV / ThePeshawarLancers

* UncannyValley: Yasmini is said to have an inhuman sort of beauty, enough to scare shitless Ibrahim Khan by simply showing her face. [[TheWorfEffect This is the man]] who had no qualms to ride suspended under a speeding train in the night to get his prey.

* NightmareFuel: The Russians suffered horribly from the Fall. They've since turned into a Satanic cannibal empire in Central Asia. And let's just leave it at that. The Fall was ''so'' destructive to them that even sanity was devoured. No wonder people in the book are reluctant to even mention them. In addition to terrorizing the native Uzbek and Kazakh peoples, there's also the matter of the Sisters...
** The followers of the Black God sacrifice girls (and presumably boys) in the most grisly manner, eat their hearts and livers raw, cook their flesh, and at some point Count Ignatieff admits to have eaten roast ''babies''.
*** Not just admits to it, but reminisces fondly about it and looks forward to going home so he can do so again.

* AlternateHistoryWank: The Raj and the Russian Empire survived the meteoric winter by retreating southwards (India - Cape Colony - Australia and Central Asia). The Dai-Nippon survived in the much colder, volcanism- and tsunami-prone Japan and notoriously undercultivated China. The United States and Central Europe perished. A closer look into the plot delves quickly in FridgeLogic: [=USA=] had the warm Southern United States and Mexico to retreat, superior railroad availability, a trained reserve force of Civil War veterans already on war footing to protect the state institutions during the Reconstruction and perished, Italy had a warm climate and still got depopulated and later conquered by the Caliphate, Spanish Empire and the Portuguese-African Empire should have escaped untouched. (If anything, [[CrapsackWorld a general cooling of the climate]] [[SolidGoldPoop would have made]] the notoriously hot and dry Iberian Peninsula into a rainy fertile land.) [[SarcasmMode How exactly was that meteoric winter so selective to cull only those people who would spoil the plot?]]
** Because the Continental US was also pelted by a spray of meteors during the fall and the Pacific Ocean was not hit by the impacts. That meant that no Tsunamis hit Japan and the Oceanic Currents which keep Japan warm were not disrupted like those of the Gulf Stream were, sparing the island nation from the worst of the temperature drop.
** If you believe Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom, it's apparently the result of [[WordOfGod Stirling]] wanting to dance over the ruins of Western civilization. And granted, the Californians and Mormons fared somewhat better.
** According to WordOfGod, it's the rail network that CAUSED the collapse of the US, it allowed refugees from the worst hit areas to overload the potentially surviving areas. Losing the entire east coast, including Washington to a tsunami can't have helped the coordination.
* ImAHumanitarian: British people turn to cannibalism [[ExaggeratedTrope with uncanny readiness during the first winter after the meteor's fall and they rush to the destruction and butchery of London after less than a year]]. Even during the worst of the 3-year Leningrad Siege, cannibalism remained the province of a small group of desperate people and the authorities managed to keep control.

* TheWoobie: 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]].
** FridgeLogic: Makes one wonder why no Dreamer Sister, having the power to predict the masters' every action, never attempted to steal supplies and money from them and escape southwards toward friendlier countries.
*** SelfFulfillingProphecy: they never see themselves running south, so they never try (essentially, they are trapped by their own prophecies). Also, other Sisters would be able to tell they are trying to run away, and might actually tell on them.

** If you believe AlternateHistoryDotCom, it's apparently the result of [[WordOfGod Stirling]] wanting to dance over the ruins of Western civilization. And granted, the Californians and Mormons fared somewhat better.

*** SelfFulfillingProphecy: they never saw themselves running south, so they never try. Also, other Sisters would be able to tell they are trying to run away, and might actually tell on them.

** FridgeLogic: Makes one wonder why no Dreamer Sister, having the power to predict the masters' every action, never attempted to steal supplies and money from them and escape southwards toward friendlier countries.

*** Not just admits to it, but reminisces fondly about it and looks forward to going home so he can do so again.

* NightmareFuel: The Russians suffered horribly from the Fall. They've since turned into a Satanic cannibal empire in Central Asia. And let's just leave it at that. The Fall was ''so'' destructive to them that even sanity was devoured. No wonder people in the book are reluctant to even mention them. In addition to terrorizing the native Uzbek and Kazakh peoples, there's also the matter of the Sisters...

* AlternateHistoryWank: The Raj and the Russian Empire survived the meteoric winter by retreating southwards (India - Cape Colony - Australia and Central Asia). The Dai-Nippon survived in the much colder, volcanism- and tsunami-prone Japan and notoriously undercultivated China. The United States and Central Europe perished. A closer look into the plot delves quickly in FridgeLogic: [=USA=] had the warm Southern United States and Mexico to retreat, superior railroad availability, a trained reserve force of Civil War veterans already on war footing to protect the state institutions during the Reconstruction and perished, Italy had a warm climate and still got depopulated and later conquered by the Caliphate, Spanish Empire and the Portuguese-African Empire should have escaped untouched. (If anything, a general cooling of the climate would have made the notoriously hot and dry Iberian Peninsula into a rainy fertile land.) [[SarcasmMode How exactly was that meteoric winter so selective to cull only those people who would spoil the plot?]]

* AlternateHistoryWank: The Raj and the Russian Empire survived the meteoric winter by retreating southwards (India - Cape Colony - Australia and Central Asia). The Dai-Nippon survived in the much colder, volcanism- and tsunami-prone Japan and notoriously undercultivated China. The United States and Central Europe perished. A closer look into the plot delves quickly in FridgeLogic: [=USA=] had the warm Southern United States and Mexico to retreat, superior railroad availability, a trained reserve force of Civil War veterans already on war footing to protect the state institutions during the Reconstruction and perished, Italy had a warm climate and still got depopulated and later conquered by the Caliphate, Spanish Empire should have escaped untouched. [[SarcasmMode How exactly was that meteoric winter so selective to cull only those people who would spoil the plot?]]

* NightmareFuel: The Russians suffered horribly from the Fall. They've since turned into a Satanic cannibal empire in Central Asia. And let's just leave it at that.