In a fascinating narrative, the author [of The Satanic Mill] combines a realistic text with eerie dream sequences which foreshadow the events of the story, but as the reader, like Krabat, begins to search desperately for the resolution and means of ridding the world of the miller's evil, he may be somewhat disappointed to find that the antidote for the black force lies in a lovely maiden's falling in love with Krabat—an ending not unfamiliar in romantic literature, but, at least for this book, certainly anticlimactic. But although the book fails symbolically to indicate anything more than a romantic cliché about the world, in sheer story-telling it succeeds remarkably well in its evocation of the seventeenth-century atmosphere, in its development of characters, and in its building of tension and drama. (p. 148)

Anita Silvey, "Early Spring Booklist: 'The Satanic Mill'," in The Horn Book Magazine (copyright © 1973 by The...