2 NOVEMBER 1889, Page 42

Blown to Bits. By R. M. Ballantyne. (Nisbet and Co.)—If

Mr. Ballantyne has worked out the vein which supplied the material for his previous works, he can still lay his stories of adventures amidst scenes comparatively fresh. In Blown to Bits the scene is the Malay Archipelago, in the neighbourhood of Krakatoa. And in the last chapter we have a long circumstantial and fairly realistic account of the tremendous eruptions which occurred in 1883. The characters, though fresh, can hardly be called interesting, and the story reads as if it had been spun out; it certainly lacks the abundance of incident which usually charac- terises the previous works by the same hand. It is perhaps, on the whole, more natural and more likely to please the young than " Blue Lights," the London story.