Leonard Bacon, reviewing That Hideous Strength, described the book as "a ghastly but in many places a magnificent nightmare". He criticised the character of Studdock as uninteresting, noting that "it is hard to get excited about the vagaries of a young, insecure and ambitious academic figure whose main concern is to get into an inner circle, any inner circle", but praised the plotting of the book: "The hunt of Ransom's remnant for the real Merlin while the villains capture the false one is as vivid as a passage in Stevenson." Although Bacon regarded the book as somewhat inferior to its two predecessors, he concluded: "This is just the sort of thing that pleases Mr. Lewis's admirers. And they are right to admire him. Win, lose or draw—and the reviewer doesn't think that this book is wholly victorious—Mr. Lewis adds energy to systems he comes in contact with."
