At first sight, this is another "treasure hunt" story, falling like its immediate predecessor, The roses of Picardie into the gap between the Alms for oblivion and First-born of Egypt sequences. Ptolomaeus Tunne, a wealthy amateur scholar, is masterminding a complex scheme to recover the treasure belonging to Xanthippe, a 13th century Greek princess who died in exile at a castle in Normandy. Involved in the scheme are a number of characters we have met previously in Alms for oblivion and The roses of Picardie.

However, there's a lot more going on here than a straightforward treasure hunt. The focus of the story is not so much on the seekers as they travel across Europe to find clues, as it is on Ptolomaeus and his niece Jo-Jo as they uncover successive layers of meaning from the various, conflicting medieval accounts of Xanthippe's story. Raven enjoys himself providing us with pastiche medieval chronicles and "translations" of ballads. Naturally, being Raven, most of these historical discussions are conducted against the background of more-or-less unorthodox sexual practices...

Even more explicitly than in The roses of Picardie, we are presented with competing naturalistic and supernatural explanations of the events in Xanthippe's life at the end of the book, and to some extent left to make up our own minds. Raven's message here (insofar as it is a message, and not just a way of teasing the reader), seems to be that even if everything can be explained on a factual level without invoking the supernatural, we might need something more to achieve a sympathetic understanding of the characters. ( )