content: Valeria is now accepted by the Riding School, where gods of patterns and time take the shape of white stallions and help determine the future of the Empire. But she and her teacher, First Rider Kerrec, both carry damage from their encounters with enemies of the Empire. Those same enemies, barbarians who follow the Unmaking (which would lead to the destruction of the world), threaten the Empire again. Can two damaged Riders, and the stallion gods who carry them, help the Empire win a deadly war?While this is the middle book of a trilogy, I preferred it to both the beginning and concluding books. I tend to be a reader of fantasy rather than romance, and I actually think that the romantic triangles/quadrangles in the other two books detracted from the plots of those books. They really felt sort of forced to me.