PotsandPlots

I wanted to read Pagans as soon as I heard about it. When I noticed at the beginning of the new year that it was being released with a Waterstones special edition, I thought it would probably be February’s Waterstones SFF book of the month, and indeed it is! And thoroughly deserved it is to. Pagans is a fabulous book.

Growing Information:

Plant With: Crime, Folklore, Alternate History.

Grows Into: A satisfying mystery in a brilliantly crafted alternate vision of what we call the United Kingdom.

Rating: Hardy Perennial 🌻🌻🌻  (Check here for rating information.)

Available Now – Here’s the Waterstones edition I bought.

Also this is a book for fans of Perilous Times (My book of 2025!)

The Review:

Pagans has two central things going on and they’re both flawlessly executed by James Alistair Henry.

The central story is a political murder, which soon appears like it might be the work of a serial killer. This gives us the first strand of the novel – a police procedural. Solving the murder, tracking down the killer, and dealing with internal and external political forces. Pagans is elegantly plotted; the mystery and its resolution are entirely satisfying.

Even better than that is Pagan’s setting. The novel imagines that Britain never came under Norman rule. The Kingdom is still divided, with what we know as England mostly ruled by Saxons, but also containing a smattering of Celts and lots of other peoples you learn about in primary school history.

This 21st-century version of Britain is wildly different, although the world has still gone through various technological revolutions, just not quite as we know it. The similarities and differences are delicious and great fun to spot.

The world-building goes much deeper than that, however. As well as Norsemen occupying Scotland and Celtic rulers in Cornwall and Wales, no Norman conquest means Christianity doesn’t gain a foothold. There are no Crusades. The British do not colonise America, which in turn changes the course of history in Africa. The geopolitics of Pagans is radically different to our own in ways I don’t want to spoil. James Alistair Henry has rendered his alternate history so convincingly throughout his novel that it’s best discovered by reading it.

In Short. Read It.

Pagans is a truly excellent book. Henry uses his device to examine topics such as immigration and patriotism and offers an interesting examination of religion and faith. At the centre of the novel is a summit to discuss “reunification,” a sort of Brexit in reverse, which allows the author to poke at contemporary politics from angles not usually seen.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the characters. Detectives Aedith and Durstan are wonderful and deserve to one day be mentioned in the same breath as Morse and Lewis.

I demolished Pagans in just a few days, and was thrilled to discover that a second book is on the way. My edition even has a QR code to take you to a page for more information. The Waterstones edition also has an excerpt from The Hoard (Book 2) as well as a short story and a fascinating reading list that will surely add to my burgeoning pile.

I can’t recommend Pagans enough. An early contender for my book of the year.