When published in 1941, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon received high praise but also some criticism. Time magazine (quoted in Wolfe) called it "one of the most passionate, eloquent, violent, beautifully written books of our time." Katherine Woods, in the New York Times Book Review, regarded it as "the magnification and intensification of the travel book form," and added that it was "carried out with tireless percipience, nourished from almost bewildering erudition, chronicled with a thoughtfulness itself fervent and poetic." Clifton Fadiman in the New Yorker thought it "as astonishing as it is brilliant ... it is also one of the great books of our time."

Other reviewers took West to task for an over-romanticized view of the virtues of Serb culture. In the New Republic (quoted in Rollyson, Rebecca West: A Life), Nigel Dennis wrote that the book was a "retelling of a tale we know all...