3 DECEMBER 1910, Page 28

The Prise. By Sydney Grier. (W. Blackwood and Sons. Cs.)—

The Prise is one of that series of "Sydney Grier's" novels which concern South-Eastern Europe, and the heroine is a lady who comes from the piractical island of Strio. It is of course an easy task for the author to follow her own imaginary politics, but the reader of this type of romance is apt to wish he could be furnishad with a table of the nations and principalities which he is expected to understand, and of the relations of the various pretenders to their thrones. There are stirring momenta in this story, the most exciting being the search for the littlo English boy who has been handed over by his political captors to the gipsies. On the whole, the book is a littla too artificial to be convincing, and it is decidedly hard to feel any confidence in the future domestic happiness of Lord and Lady Armitage. The figure of the heroine, however, before her marriage is very ably drawn, and her picturesque charm is well described.