The Reavers
The Reavers is a saucy fantasy romp in the vein of MacDonald Fraser’s Pyrates. It is set in the border region of Scotland, sometime in the reign of Good Queen Bess, as dastardly Spaniards plot to take over the kingdoms of Scotland and England and introduce beer by the litre. The plot, however, is not the thing as characters are all. A wonderful array of characters comes and goes, sometimes at the most peculiar times. Heroes abound, like Lady Godiva Dacre, wilful, passionate and proud to bursting; and Bonny Gilderoy, Errol Flynn with a Glasgow accent, while villains dazzle, like La Infamosa, the Mata Hari of Manzanilla. Add in a Geordie Dirty Dozen, farthingales, much quivering of bosoms and many bucklings of swash, mix with language that is part Elizabethan prose and part modern slang, and you have a heady brew. This is a very enjoyable read, but perhaps more for fans of Pyrates than those of the Flashman novels.
