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The Reavers | 
| Author: George Macdonald Fraser
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £1.99
You Save: £6.00 (75%)
New (31) Used (13) from £0.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 78853
Media: Paperback
Pages: 230
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0007253842
EAN: 9780007253845
ASIN: 0007253842
Publication Date: June 2, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: New unused copy , usually mint condition but may have minor shelf wear or remainder mark , fast dispatch . A1H
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Hugely disappointing October 17, 2008
I'm a huge fan of the Flashman series so The Reavers was such a disappointment. The style was awful and the humour worse. It was dull, cluttered and confusing. I perservered through the book but by the end was just skimming every other page in the rush to finish it. An example of the books humour is in a character who is a monk having the name 'Fray Bentos'. The book, although set a few hundred years ago, constantly references pop culture and modern inventions like Kylie, The London Tube, Hello magazines etc. I just couldn't get past the silliness of it. The author constantly talks to the reader and describes events as they happen like a stage direction manual - this happens, than that happens, then this happens, then would you beleive it that happens... I hated this book!
 A Farcical Farewell September 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Like most others who will pick up this final book from Fraser, I am a longtime devotee of his Flashman series. And the sheer pleasure of reading that series has driven me to seek out and read most of his other fiction and non-fiction over the years (including this book's ancestor, The Pyrates). Of these twenty or so books, this one is clearly the silliest of the lot, and anyone picking it up should be ready for a pretty heavy dose of wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
The book is essentially a farcical rewriting of his earlier novel, The Candlemass Road, complete with many of the same characters and situations. The story is set in the same 16th-century Scottish/English borderlands that Fraser wrote a history of under the title The Steel Bonnets: Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. It concerns a Spanish plot to kidnap King James and replace him with an impostor (and if that sounds familiar, it's because Fraser used the device in Royal Flash). Seeking to foil this plot are an Elizabethan secret agent, a Scottish highwayman, a stunning English noblewoman, and her saucy sidekick.
If this sounds like a delightful historical thriller, well, be warned that Fraser wrote this one with his tongue even more firmly planted in cheek than usual. It brims with modern pop culture references, anachronisms, authorial asides, and over-the-top renderings of thick Scots dialect. None of these bothered me, but plenty of other readers seemed to find some or all of these elements annoying. However, in the preface, Fraser is pretty clear that the book was primarily written to amuse himself, so I'm willing to go along with the ride. Especially since it's the last we're likely to get from such a great storyteller. (Unless, that is, a literary executor manages to uncover one last packet of Flashman adventures....)
Ultimately, a pretty minor and self-derivative work from a very entertaining writer. If approached in the right frame of mind, it should provide a few hours of very light entertainment, and possibly spur the reader to check out some of the true history of the setting.
I ve had more fun at the dentists August 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Firstly, I have to make the point that I have generally loved the work of this great man. The Flashman books are fantastic, and even the poorer installments of histories best anti hero are well worth a read due to their humour and above all, their historical accuracy.
I am sorry to say that I would rate a trip to the dentist as being less painful as reading 'The Reavers'.
I dont say this lightly, and I know that the previous reviewer enjoyed the book, but it wasnt for me at all.
This book was set in Elizabethan times, but frankly it could have been set during the time The Martians landed outside 10 Downing Street, because its about as hisorically accurate. I cringed throughout and in the end had to give up.
I am so sorry this was his last book, because he cant improve on this poor effort. I only seem to comment on books I have enjoyed, but in this case my huge disappointment spurred me on.
Keep away from this book, read all about Flashman instead, this is how i want to remember George MacDonald Fraser, and not for this book.
Innocent, silly fun August 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
'The Reavers' is indeed unlike any other book by George MacDonald Fraser. It is, for starters, not at all as historically accurate as the Flashman-series is, and then the humour is... well, downright silly! This is not to say I didn't enjoy reading it, and GMF freely admits in his introduction that he wrote 'The Reavers' with no other end in mind than amusing himself (and he did, it shows) but quite frankly: whereas I could go on (re-)reading the Flashman-novels, I wouldn't be able to do so with 'The Reavers'.
Silly and all but unreadable July 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let me begin by saying that, like many other reviewers, I have read and very much enjoyed GMF's Flashman books. I've not read all of them, but enjoyed all the ones I've read. Then there's this book. It looks pretty. I like the cover artwork, which is similar to the Flashman series. But O! 'ow different 'tis inside... Again, like others have remarked it is full of anachronisms and allusions to popular culture. I could handle that. After all, it doesn't pretend to be historically accurate. The thing that spoils this book for me is the heavily accented dialogue of its eccentric characters. You have to read so slowly to work out what it means. One character -- a dashing highwayman -- sounds like a cross between The Queen and a Geordie. (I never did quite work out why.) Then there's the humour. A satellite dish or an internal combustion engine, for example, in the sixteenth century might be funny the first time it intrudes on the story, or the second, or the third, but take my word for it that after not very long it just becomes irksome, silly and pointless. I managed two chapters. I think this book is aimed at diehard GMF fans who will buy this book just to complete their collection. I can't imagine anybody else would enjoy it. A less scrupulous person might put some heavy books on it to flatten the pages down so they could try to sell it on as new... To conclude, reading it was a chore. Life's too short.
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