I really liked Amber's character and the relationship between her and Teray. This series shows the confrontation between the telepathic Patternists and the spreading Clayarks. The mutes (regular humans) are a nonfactor. I read the other books in the series, and I thought that the Patternists already had a good story about them and that the Clayarks were neglected, so I felt it was a missed opportunity that they weren't a bigger topic of conversation in this book. They were a threat to the Patternists but not as much as they could have been, and the idea of Patternists being infected by Clayarks didn't seem to be explored at all. A good book nonetheless.