The novel concerns a time of great change, when four forces – in the form of secret societies – contend to control the next phase of humanity's history.

A revolution by Mexican migrants, the craft of "mind weaving" and a strange group of "Patricks", all apparently tramps but with great resources, appear in the center of a narrative.

James Blish recommended Fourth Mansions, calling it "inventive" and "fascinating straight through-and as a dividend, it is often funny", but faulted it for "a whole lot of over-writing" and "speeches that could never come out of a human mouth".

He noted that beneath the narrative's superficial chaos lay a "consistent and pervasive" symbolic structure assuring that "the book makes perfect sense".

"[4] The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction described Fourth Mansions as "a cartoonishly oneiric conflict between cosmic good and evil that draws on the mystic visions of Saint Theresa of Avila".