At 65,000 words, this novel is shorter than most of Morris’s fantasies, which is all to the good. It starts off well but tends to peter out. For one thing, Morris was not strong on plot. His adventures and encounters “just happen.” Morris could no doubt have defended himself by saying that he was writing, not a “modern” novel, but a medieval romance of the type of those of Chrestien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg, Lodovico Ariosto, and Sir Thomas Malory. They never worried about intricate, logical, self-consistent plots either.
L. Sprague deCamp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), loc. 925
A digital form of the sadly lost fashion for copying out memorable passages from texts. I kept losing my actual book.
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