In this, the fifth and final Richard Hannay adventure, John Buchan makes his hero an older, wiser and more yielding character (the book was written a full decade after the fourth Hannay novel). The Island of Sheep is one of Buchan's least known works, but it continues his popular style of high adventure, wonderfully descriptive prose, erudite literary references and veiled subtexts. In reviewing the book, The Times Literary Supplement described Buchan as "evidently very much more than a yarn-spinner; and yet, as a yarn-spinner, so complete a master".