Book 6 sees Steinn desperately seeking spiritual meaning by entering a Benedictine monastery at Sept Fontaines in Francophone Belgium.

Book 7 recounts Steinn's return to Iceland, where he discovers Diljá's marriage to Örnólfur and fails to find satisfaction among his family in Reykjavík.

The novel to a large extent is an epistolatory novel, comprising letters and sometimes literary works (both prose and verse) or monologues by its characters.

The principal character, the young Icelandic poet Steinn Elliði, who shares many essential experiences with his author, engages the reader in a whirl of often paradoxical and conflicting ideas.

Kristján Albertsson wrote a review of ten pages that appeared in the magazine Vaka the same year as the book was published.

[4]At last, at last, an impressive literary work, that rises like a cliff-city from the flatness of Icelandic poetry- and narrative-production in recent years!

At a 64 degree north latitude this has never been done.However, Kristjan's judgment is not all of one character, and he also says that the work is "no masterpiece", "in some places contrived, fake, unscrewed, its metaphors tasteless or ugly" ("ekkert meistaraverk", "sumstaðar tilgerðarlegt, falskt, forskrúfað, líkingar bragðlausar eða ófagrar"), but it continues: "the development of today's Icelandic narrative style takes half a century's jump with this book of H. K. L." (Þróun tímaborins íslenzks sögustíls tekur hálfrar aldar stökk með þessari bók H.K.L.").