"is it not strange an all-wise Creator should have been at pains to fashion this brave world about us for little men and women such as we to lie and pilfer in?
Was it worth while, think you, to arch the firmament above our rogueries, and light the ageless stars as candles to display our antics?"

So this is pretty straightforward stuff. Its a comedy romance with plenty of misunderstandings, reminded me of some of the Shakespeare comedies.

None of which is stuff i actually like. However it is pretty well written and the author does everything with a wink in his eye. Apart from the comedy/romance the only theme if the problems of money but it isn’t dwelt on that much.

I’ve had worse reading experiences with Cabell, this is light and easy and quite compelling in the 3rd quarter.
In the end though i’m not sure i’d recommend it too much and i’ve dropped my score due to comparing it to Cabells other books due to its simplicity. ( )

eh. i remember cabell being better than this. ( )

This edition of Cabell's first novel is probably the one most commonly found in bookstores, the so-called "Kalki" edition. These Kalki editions were published by McBride in the 1920s, and featured brown covers with an insignia on the front of a horse . . . Kalki, you may remember, is the eschatalogical Hindu figure who returns to Earth riding on a silver stallion, ushering in the end of the world. The Kalki editions were not, oddly, the last; that was the Storisende editions, and there "The Eagle's Shadow" gets a later number in the oeuvre, a later number to signify its place in time in the elaborate (and slightly cracked) assemblage called by the author "The Biography of the Life of Manuel."

Read this edition, and you will get an introduction by an author I had not heard of in other contexts, but on quick research appears to have existed in actual fact -- in our reality, not merely Cabell's. Funny thing is, though, he writes a bit like Cabell.

As I am now, perhaps, under the influence of the master himself. Indeed, this is the problem of so much writing on Cabell; the writing could be by Cabell himself. In the appendix to this volume (entitled "About Morals") is reprinted a number of letters about the alleged immorality of this book. I can't be certain, but I get the idea that Cabell himself wrote a number of them.

Oh, probably not. But it wouldn't be the only time in Cabell's career that scandalizing the masses of moralistic Americans was the way the publishers pushed his books out the Shipping Department. ( )

Cabell's first novel is something of a drawing-room comedy. He did not hit his real stride until "The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck," perhaps, but his entelechy is evident, if not in full development. ( )