The Reavers

Neil Genzlinger

The plot involves the lovely Lady Godiva Dacre; a pair of dashing suitors, Archie Noble and Gilderoy; other colorful characters with names like Trouserless Will and La Infamosa; and a plot to kidnap King James VI of Scotland and replace him with an impostor. But the story hardly matters here; the point is the way it is told, with an outlandish mix of exaggeration, direct address, historical fact, historical impossibilities, irrelevant asides and thick accents.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

The late author of the beloved Flashman Papers (Flashman on the March, etc.) offers a 16th-century tale of swordplay and gleefully anachronistic wordplay along the Scottish borderlands. Fraser does a Highland fling with the English language as he unfolds a tortuous and torturous tale of four heroes: Gilderoy, dashing Scottish highwayman; Archie Noble, gallant Englishman and proud "double-nought operative, licensed to slay"; and a beauteous pair of ladies, the noble Lady Godiva Dacre and her randy companion, Kylie. Together the four must stop a Spanish plot to kidnap and replace James VI of Scotland with an impostor who will then gain the English throne on the death of Queen Elizabeth. They must overcome wizards, witches, warlocks and sundry other hazards while Archie and Gilderoy vie for Godiva's fickle affections. Readers must stay alert to keep up with the author's constant verbal sallies. Fraser died on January 2, 2008. (Apr.)

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Library Journal

Fraser's posthumously published tale takes the reader from the Victorian realms of his Flashman novels to the Elizabethan era for a wildly nonsensical romp involving highwaymen, 16th-century secret agents, a beautiful heiress, and a Spanish plot against the crown. Set on the border between England and Scotland, the plot (if it can be called that) revolves around a Spanish effort, led by the mysterious La Infamosa, to kidnap King James and replace him with an impostor. Attempting to foil her are the ravishing Lady Godiva Dacre and her dimwitted companion, Kylie, along with Gilderoy, part-time highwayman and Scotland's best-known secret agent, and Archie Noble, English "double-nought" secret agent and ostensible hero of the tale. After a series of hilarious complications, the unlikely foursome finds itself at La Infamosa's cave just as the coup is about to take place. A piece of inspired silliness and a worthy companion to the Flashman tales, this novel is hard to resist with its beginning: "It was a dark and stormy night in Elizabethan England." Recommended for public libraries.
—Lawrence Rungren

Kirkus Reviews

The rowdy, bawdy adventures of a charming cad, adept with both heart-slicing blade and heart-melting words. British author Fraser (1925-2008), the phenomenally popular creator of Harry Flashman (Flashman on the March, 2005, etc.), really has only one character in his armory, the rogue whom men admire and women faint over, even as they recognize that he's the sort mummy warned them against. In this instance, the rogue in question is a light-fingered reaver, a sort of junior highwayman out on the frontier of Scotland and England, who finds his merry days complicated by regicidal conspiracy, the grand larceny of glimmering jewels and a rather luscious gentlewoman named, lest the point be missed, Lady Godiva. Hijinks, japes, jests and jousts ensue. The specifics are beside the point, for a Fraser novel is an excuse to indulge in goofery. This book, as the narrator says, presents "an all-star cast of steely-eyed heroes, noble ladies, unspeakable villains, gorgeous wantons, corrupt creeps, maniacs, freebooters, freeloaders, and hordes of colourful extras, in a variety of Great Locations." He left out the Spanish torturers, twisting their waxed mustachios in evil glee, and a few discards from the cast of Braveheart, but Fraser's catalog about covers it. As if this were all not enough, this, like any Fraser novel, is a battlefield littered with dead puns (of two hanged cows, for instance, "ye couldnae tell one frae the udder"), obvious names ("the reigning Scottish Traitor of the Year, Lord Anguish") and tattered bodices ("where petrified soldiery had stood, there were now forty voluptuous dancing girls in gauzy trousers and flimsy veils, undulating in beauteous bewilderment"). Fans of Fraserknow what they're in for-and they'll have a grand romp.