CHAMBERS, ROBERT WILLIAM. Slayer of souls. *$1.75 (2½c) Doran
20–8632
When the story opens the heroine, Tressa Norne, is on shipboard leaving behind her China and the memories of her four years as a captive temple girl. When next met she is in a hotel room in San Francisco, expelling an intruder by the simple expedient of opening a bolted door with the power of her eye, and causing a yellow snake to appear out of the atmosphere. Next she is on the stage in New York giving an exhibition of black magic, with secret service men watching her. Victor Cleves obtains an interview and enlists her in a crusade against the “red spectre,” anarchy, otherwise bolshevism. For the secret of the bolshevist advance is really magic, “brewed in the hell pit of Asia.” It has conquered Russia, is spreading over Europe and threatening the United States, where already the I. W. W., the parlor socialists and some two million other deluded mortals are in the power of the dread Yezidees of China. Indeed, we have the author’s own word for it that all that stood between “a trembling civilization and threat of hell’s own chaos” was this little band of secret service men and one lone girl. Civilization totters but is saved.
“‘The slayer of souls’ is as good a story as ‘In secret,’ and that is no mean praise. We embark upon strange and perilous adventures, and it is not long that we bother to count whether or not the episodes of his tale are practicable. They are exciting and they are full of wonder, which suffices.” D. L. M.
+ Boston Transcript p6 Je 26 ’20 440w
“It is a well told story, but Mr Chambers, our most shining example of a debased talent, can write better than he does here.”
+ − Ind 103:322 S 11 ’20 120w
“The reader sympathizes wholly with one of the characters who at the end of the book ‘whispers hoarsely, “For God’s sake, let us get out of this!”’”
− N Y Times 25:292 Je 6 ’20 630w Outlook 125:223 Je 2 ’20 80w