Book review - "The Reivers" by George MacDonald Fraser (re-reading)

The last novel to be published in Fraser's life time. A throwback to The Pyrates but not as good. Fraser loves language and I wanted to like this but he lost the knack of telling a good story and creating new characters. In Pyrates the characters were memorable and different - here they kind of all blended in (I got the two heroic male leads especially confused). The story isn't that great either (the first bit is based on The Candlemass Road) - maybe if he'd introduced a few more genuinely famous people like given a bigger role to King James or something. It'll be honest, it was tiresome to read.