Commentator David Williams, remarking on a "sense of loss" evident in much of Jack Vance's writings, notes that "Vance exercised this sense of loss in high ironic form in the Lyonesse sequence: all the adventures, all the triumphs and tragedies are futile in an ultimate sense, because the reader knows that, regardless of Murgen's striving, the Elder Isles are doomed to sink into the Atlantic Ocean. All the loves and hates, all the magic will be lost, to be recalled only faintly in myth."