“Both the story and the setting hold the reader though one dislikes the pictures of the mission teachers and the incidents are melodramatic. Some people will object to this.”
+ − Booklist 17:72 N ’20
“As for the Chinese atmosphere and personnel of the story, one may accept them as sound—if that matters in a story of this kind, and if atmosphere and personnel can be sound when the action is unsound or patently artificial. All this, you may say, is the breaking of a butterfly on the clumsy wheel of criticism. ‘Hills of Han’ is not a butterfly; it is a sort of gilded bat with the butterfly label.” H. W. Boynton
− Bookm 51:583 Jl ’20 320w Dial 69:320 S ’20 60w
“Samuel Merwin has written better novels than ‘Hills of Han,’ but it offers agreeable entertainment for an uncritical hour.”
+ − Ind 103:186 Ag 14 ’20 70w
“While neither as entertaining nor as vivid as some of Mr Merwin’s earlier romances, the story is an interesting one and has some dramatic moments.”
+ − N Y Times 25:205 Ap 25 ’20 700w
“There is good fiction stuff here, but it is clumsily put together.”
+ − Outlook 125:125 My 19 ’20 80w