Product Description

Elizabethan England, and a dastardly Spanish plot to take over the throne is uncovered. It's up to Agent Archie Noble to save Queen and country in this saucy and swashbuckling romp from the bestselling author of The Flashman Papers and The Pyrates. Spoiled, arrogant, filthy rich, and breathtakingly beautiful, the young Lady Godiva Dacre is exiled from the court of Good Queen Bess (who can't abide red-haired competition) to her lonely estate in distant Cumberland, where she looks forward to bullying the peasantry and getting her own imperious way. Little does she guess that the turbulent Scottish border is the last place for an Elizabethan heiress, beset by ruthless reivers (many of them unshaven), blackmailing ruffians, fiendish Spanish plotters intent on regime change and turning Merrie England into a ghastly European Union province. And no one to rely on but her half-witted blonde school chum, a rugged English superman with a knack for disaster, and a dashing highwayman who looks like Errol Flynn but has a Glasgow accent. To say nothing of warlocks, impersonators, taxi-drivers riding brooms, burlesque artists, the drunkest man in Scotland, and several quite normal characters -- oh, yes, gossips, it's all happening in The Reavers, a moral tale obviously conceived in some kind of fit by Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser ! well, he's getting on, and was bound to crack eventually. He admits (nay, insists) that it's a crazy story for readers who love fun for its own sake.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71970 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
Praise for 'The Reavers' 'The Reavers is farcical, nonesensical and great fun!entertaining stuff and acutely observed even if it is utterly bonkers.' '!a welcome reminder of a prolific, playful talent!extremely silly, but it is silliness of a superior kind.' Seven 'emphatically superior nonsense' Sunday Telegraph 'Flippant anachronisms abound and relentless gags recall the ribald spirit of Blackadder more than the author's saucy Flashman adventuresin this uproarious spoof' Financial Times 'wonderfully silly' The Times 'A welcome reminder of a prolific, playful talent' Seven 'Entertaining stuff and actutely observed' News of the World Praise for 'Flashman on the March': 'There is a little of Flashman in all of us -- but not enough' Evening Standard 'The Flashman Papers do what all great sagas do -- winning new admirers along the way but never, ever betraying old ones. It is an immense achievement' Sunday Telegraph 'In our crass, humourless, anaemic, politically correct age, there could be no better tonic or treat than the outrageous Flashy's bold descriptions of action in battle or bedroom. To relish George MacDonald Fraser is to rediscover the joy of reading' Daily Telegraph 'Everything we expect from a Flashman adventure is here: lechery, double-crossing, real people, the epic poltroonery from which Flashman emerges as saviour of the hour!my one complaint about the series -- surely the great mock-historical romp of the past half-century -- is that MacDonald Fraser does not add to it often enough' Mail on Sunday

About the Author
The author of the famous 'Flashman Papers' and the 'Private McAuslan' stories, George MacDonald Fraser has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he has also written numeous films, most notably 'The Three Musketeers', 'The Four Musketeers', and the James Bond film, 'Octopussy'. George Macdonald Fraser died in January 2008 at the age of 82.

Customer Reviews

Absurd and utterly unlike GMF's other novels.
I purchased this book a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to attend a book signing and get George Macdonald Fraser (yes, the great chap himself) to autograph my copy. Whilst waiting, I read most of the book (well, it was a long wait!). I was thinking at the time that most of his usual readers were not going to like this, and reading the two other reviews posted here on Amazon, it seems I was right.

However, I enjoyed it mightily.

I have read almost all his previous novels, and I am a huge fan of the Flashman series. And this is why I thought most people wouldn't like this one - it isn't historically accurate at all. It's more in the style of Robert Rankin. It is a sixteenth century novel full of twenty-first century references (and very modern and political ones at that - I don't think a lot of them will be understood ten years from now). But I did find it very amusing, and very clever. It does sit very much at odds with his other works, though.

Personally, I'd tell everyone to give it a read. It is funny and witty and enjoyable. Just don't go thinking it will be anything like his other books! Once you get past that way of thinking it does help.

Loyal Reader, Beware !
I was on tenterhooks waiting for this to arrive and I started reading straightaway....100 pages later and it's on the shelf, never to be touched again ! Filled with the silliness that marked the great GMF's screenplays this one makes 'The Pyrates' seem sober and sensible. It's clever, as you'd expect, but fun ? Not for me I'm afraid, and I love everyhing this great popular writer has produced (except for the Pyrates, which I merely 'liked'). Got an extra star because the author obviously enjoyed writing it and he deserves to be happy !

Swan Song of a Great Author...
Well, he's gone now, as of a day or two ago. George MacDonald Fraser, that is. Godspeed to him, he entertained us with his stellar writing and imagination through McAuslan, Flashy, and a host of other fictitious and semi-fictitious characters in his many memorable novels, and moved us and made us think in his various memoirs/opinion pieces such as the incomparable QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE and the gleefully non-P.C. LIGHT'S ON AT SIGNPOST. This last book, THE REAVERS, revisits his CANDLEMASS ROAD territory, with a healthy dose of THE PYRATES-style out-of-time humor and crazed comic style. Obviously he wrote this for the sheer joy of it, taking one last romp through the loves and influences that had shaped his writer's life. I'm taking it as a last hail-fellow-well-met from one of the great English storytellers of the 20th century, and glad he had time to favor us with one more before he made his exit. Great writer, and a life well lived. I admired the guy, and what a legacy he leaves for the ages.