In completing the trilogy which began with The Captive and The Feathered Serpent,… [in The Amethyst Ring] the author has carried to a logical conclusion the adventures and experiences of Julián Escobar…. A historical novel in the sense that the splendors and the horrors of the ancient Indian cultures of America are understandingly portrayed, the narrative related by the unhappy, unheroic protagonist is not merely an account of random adventures. The author has eschewed the grand scale and the melodramatic in his telling but has been both sensitive and objectively perceptive of the memorable moments that reveal the depths of human experience….

Paul Heins, in a review of "The Amethyst Ring," in The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LIX, No. 3, June, 1983, p. 315.