2025/040: Pagans — James Alastair Henry

2025/040: Pagans — James Alastair Henry

'...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.

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