Mr. Grant-Watson is one of the most resolute and intrepid novelists I have met, and his directness of speech may give offence, I fear, to the more reticent of his readers. His story of two white men and _Alice Desmond_, freed from the social conventions and let loose among the natives on a remote island in the Pacific, proceeds apace and with little regard for the susceptibilities of civilisation and refinement. Familiar but rarely printed language is used when occasion demands; primitive passions stalk naked and unashamed; and when murder is to be done it is done brutally, forthwith and notwithstanding the respective merits, from an heroic point of view, of active and passive agents. Being myself so situated in life that I am never likely to take part in any affair more passionate and drastic than a football match or a law-suit, I found the savage reality, the candour and the unbridled wrath of _Where Bonds are Loosed_ (Duckworth) most welcome by contrast. It gave me pleasure to see a man's annoyance being worked off by the use of fists, knives and bullets, a woman's impatience spending itself in immediate violence, and love and hatred being expressed in sharp and decisive action rather than in deliberate subtleties of conversation. In short, Mr. Watson left me wondering, somewhat fondly, to what lengths I myself might go in my more heated moments if I too were isolated on Kanna Island and beyond the supervision of police-constables and next-door neighbours. * * * * *