[With The Dancing Bear, the] author shows how individuals adjust in alien surroundings. He also points to the need of adolescents to establish their own identities: the daughter seems happy to adopt Hun society while the slave, trying to decide whether he is merely a thing, or an individual in his own right, accepts the Roman model for its civilized standards. These are important matters. That he uses them as the backbone in an absorbing tale is a measure of the quality of this writer. (pp. 252-53)

Bill Messer, in The School Librarian, September, 1972.