A reviewer in Freeman's Journal was underwhelmed by the book noting it is "described as 'a novel with a purpose.'

Masters of the craft of bookmaking like Dickens also wrote novels with a purpose, the moral of which ran in a thin red line of tragedy carefully woven into a healthy story in which comedy had its share.'

In The Devastators the purpose is the whole plot; and, however excellent it may be to hold up the mirror to ill-chosen marriages for the instruction of others, the result is rather dismal to the reader in this case.

"[2] In her autobiography Thirty Years in Australia published in 1930, Cambridge made the following confession: "When I wrote a novel called The Devastators I knew that I was laying down a rule contradicted in my own circle by two glaring exceptions.

So that to this large extent my theory of the effect of physical charm upon its possessor is discredited.