The Reavers - George MacDonald Fraser

Written by George MacDonald Fraser
Read by Bill Wallis
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
Publisher: 2007 HarperCollins Publishers

It’s the turn of the seventeenth century (sort of) in the wild Borderlands of Scotland.

Spoiled, arrogant, filthy rich, and breathtakingly beautiful, the young Lady Godiva Dacre and her companion Mistress Kylie Delishe are 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 reavers (many of them unshaven), blackmailing ruffians, fiendish Spanish plotters intent on regime change, and turning Merrie England into a ghastly European Union province. She has 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.

A casket of jewels, an accidental murder, and an estate at risk are the order of the day.
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 listeners who love fun for its own sake.

Readers must stay alert to keep up with the author’s constant verbal sallies..

Fraser’s posthumously published tale (Fraser died on January 2, 2008) takes the reader from the Victorian realms of his Flashman novels to the Elizabethan era for a wildly nonsensical …., 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. … 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.”…. 2008 Library Journal, LLC

“…. Fraser dutifully warns readers that this book is nonsense. It is meant to be. What it all amounts to is a genre unto itself, the ahistoric historical costume drama, maybe, or perhaps the outlandishly anachronistic swashbuckler. Whatever you want to call it, it is the literary equivalent of a joyous celebration of old-fashioned, flat-out, high-flying, over-the-top tales of derring-do and ribald romancing. It’s a hell of a ride, but don’t expect it to make a whole lot of sense. If you do, you’ve missed the point and likely missed the sheer exuberance in storytelling on display here.”….Booklist 2008, American Library Association.)