The Reavers

Fraser is best known for his series of Flashman novels. But this one is a silly stand-alone. In fact, the first sentence of his foreward to the book is: “This book is nonsense.” Which means that basically, he just wrote it for fun and he's not hewing closely to the facts of the time period he set it in (Elizabethan England, somewhere around 159-, Fraser is willfully vague). The characters frequently spout anachronisms and it's really just all done for laughs. If you're familiar with Fraser's book The Pyrates, it's close to that style. I loved The Pyrates, and this one was diverting enough but not as easy to follow. Fraser renders his characters' dialogue into their various accents (Scottish, Cockney, American Deep South, Spanish, etc.) and that tends to slow the reading speed doon abit. If ya nae ken whut ahm tockin' aboot, yer in fer a bit o' a slog. Oh, also, a passing familiarity with Cockney rhyming slang also helped in a few spots. To wit: china (plate) = mate, butcher's (hook) = look.