[Ruth Arthur] is adept at giving vitality to characters and incidents of the past. Unfortunately, there is a surfeit of plot and people in [The Saracen Lamp], and no one character becomes absorbing. The multi-character/century technique has been used before by this author and more successfully; in A Candle in Her Room …, the evil influence of the doll held the story together and maintained reader attention much more effectively than the amorphous device of the Saracen Lamp does here. (p. 136)