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If you're the sort of D&D player who hates psionics, this book won't change your mind and it probably won't cause you to decide to add psionic powers to your game. If you are a completist who likes introducing all of the options in the game, then you may enjoy some of the new classes and options in this book. If you like some psionic flavor but not too much, then you might find a few worthwhile bits to cherry-pick.
Here's the nitty-gritty chapter breakdown.
The Introduction wastes no time: It's a single page, half of which is a reiteration of the rules for swift and immediate actions. If you haven't heard of those, you've been out of the loop for a bit, because they show up as a sidebar in just about every book now. Most likely they'll creep into the next edition as part of the core rules. The other half of the introduction is brief fiction and a single minor overview of "things that have referenced psionics before," as well as the new base psionic classes.
Chapter One: Classes introduces three new psionic core classes. Each class has the usual twenty-level spread, play tips, representative art, and a starting package.
The ardent is a sort of philosopher-psion. In terms of build and mechanics, it most closely resembles the cleric class: the ardent chooses a pair of psionic mantles, which are very similar to domains, and then selects powers from those mantle listings. This means that each ardent has a "philosophical theme." Ardents are also reasonable combatants and use heavy armor and simple weapons. This places them in the mid-range combat characters, plus a small number of psychic powers around a pair of philosophical themes. Ardents feel somewhat like "clerics of a philosophy" from the earlier 2nd edition cleric sourcebook; a given ardent might choose to understand the fundamental nature of Good, of Conflict, or of Corruption and Madness. Each choice provides a power (somewhat like a domain granted power) and a list of accessible powers - essentially, building the ardent's power list for purposes of power choices and psionic item use. Interestingly, since ardents are philosophers and not priests, they can learn mantles of opposed ideologies, such as Good and Evil, and even express them at the same time.
If your campaign uses philosopher archetypes or has any sort of academy of high philosophy, the ardent could fit right in. Ardents with the right mantles can also make passable substitutes for clerics, although their power use is a bit more spontaneous and they don't have the clerical ability to turn/rebuke undead.
The divine mind is analagous to the paladin as the ardent is to the cleric. A divine mind has a reasonable amount of combat skill, with martial weapons and heavy armor, although his attack rating is only like a cleric's. The divine mind uses mantles like an ardent, but manifestation of powers is secondary to him; he does not even manifest powers until 5th level. Instead, the divine mind gains aura benefits based on his mantles, and can extend them to allies in the group. Low-level divine minds have small auras, but the aura expands as the divine mind gains levels. The auras also scale up with level, and high-level divine minds can quickly switch auras or use multiple auras. In many ways, the divine mind resembles the paladin from Diablo II: A reasonable combatant by himself with useful powers for self-enhancement, but best when augmenting a group with his skills. Notably, divine minds share the alignment options of clerics: They need only be similar to that of a patron deity.
The divine mind is likely to be difficult to integrate into an established game. The class ostensibly "channels divine power through a psionic aura." This doesn't seem to fit into the idea of a core class - maybe a prestige class, more like the Sanctified Mind from Lords of Madness. As a paladin substitute, the divine mind has less healing power and less resistance, plus it doesn't have any sort of smiting, detection, or mount abilities; it relies on the granted powers of its mantles, and the enhancements of its (very short range at low level) auras instead. Thematically, the divine mind seems most appropriate as a sort of philosopher-warrior guardian to a deity associated with mental or psionic power. The class's last-minute split from the ardent is evident in the fact that its text regarding power points is confusing and it was left off the back cover sales text of new classes.
The lurk is similar to the psychic rogue, which first appeared online in the Mind's Eye column at the Wizards of the Coast website. Tweaked to be more psionic and less rogue, the lurk has its own power tree, and it manifests a few powers in addition to gaining certain psionically-enhanced benefits to its roguish skills. The lurk's primary ability is its psionically-focused sneak attack, which can benefit from a variety of enhancements. Strangely, the lurk has relatively few skill ranks for a rogue archetype (4 per level) and no class skills or abilities allowing it to substitute for a rogue in traps and locks work. This essentially relegates the lurk to second-string skirmisher, much like a monk or scout.
Including lurks in a game requires a bit of work, as they are essentially psionic assassins (not to be confused with the psychic assassin prestige class from the Mind's Eye online articles). A lurk could be a Vlad Taltos-like psychically augmented killer for hire, but the questions remain: who trains them? What do they do when not on contract? How come they take up adventuring?
Chapter Two: Prestige Classes continues the crunchiness with eight new prestige classes of variable utility. The Anarchic Initiate is thematically similar to the wild mage. Harnessing raw chaotic energy, the character learns to perform more powerful wild surges than a typical psionic wilder, and even to cause temporary breaches to Limbo. The class has full manifesting progression, and essentially allows a wilder to depart from improving the usual wilder powers and instead move to developing more chaos-oriented powers. The Ebon Saint is a prestige class for the lurk. Over five levels, it loses one manifester level and in exchange provides slightly improved sneak attack ability along with the ability to enhance sneak attacks with special modifiers that steal information, swipe form, or cloud the opponent's mind, not unlike the powers of the spellthief and shadow mind from Complete Adventurer. The Ectopic Adept is a five-level class (four manifester levels) that excels in astral constructs. In some ways it is similar to the theurgist prestige class from the Dungeon Master's Guide: The adept enhances its constructs and learns to internalize some of their powers. The Flayerspawn Psychic learns to adapt illithid heritage in order to develop mind flayer-like powers, including an improved mind blast that has the characteristic long range and duration of the illithid's crushing mental cone. This is a ten-level class that is unlikely for heroic characters who aren't very unusual. As it only gains six manifester levels over that spread, its emphasis is on the bonus illithid feats and on an improved mind blast. Since many of the illithid feats are less than sterling, this isn't much of a trade. The Illumine Soul continues the focus on making the soulknife the most kick-ass psionic class around (as you may have seen in the prior Races of Eberron sourcebook). This version of the soulknife gains a positive-energy mind blade, so it can cause serious hurt on the undead. This is a five-level class that continues to improve its mind blade with each level, so there's very little reason for a soulknife not to consider it. The Soulbow focuses on ranged mind blade attacks, and gains abilities that allow a more powerful ranged mind blade, more enhancements, and close combat shooting. Essentially, it's how to turn your soulknife into an archery specialist. The Stormwalker is another manifestation of the D&D design team's obsession with storm-themed prestige classes like the Shining Blade of Heironeous or the various storm-god classes. It is a five level class (three manifester levels) that adds electricity damage to all allied attacks as an aura, gains electrical resistance, and gains immunity to storms. This is perhaps the most thematically unique of the prestige classes presented, but it's still a very vanilla "yay, storms and lightning" class. The Zerth Cenobite is a time manipulator, much as the elocator from the Expanded Psionics Handbook is a space manipulator. Although the cenobite has few powers, and is clearly meant as a monk spin-off (thanks to the still mind class feature requirement and improved monk features), it has a series of intriguing powers that allow it to slip outside of the time stream, manipulate the speed of time, and exercise precognitive power. This is a highly evocative concept that could apply well to any sort of psionic monk character who wants an unusual time-themed set of powers.
The prestige classes are generally moderately balanced, with a suite of modest powers, except of course for the soulknife classes which are rather strong. Curiously, aside from the Illumine Soul and the Zerth Cenobite, there are few real divergences from "standard psionic fare" or "standard prestige class fare." The Ebon Saint makes a lurk better. The Soulbow and Illumine Soul make a soulknife better. The Anarchic Initiate makes a wilder better. The Flayerspawn Psychic makes a character with illithid feats better. Where are the classes that diverge from psionic mainstream? I could think of the Green Empath, a psionic druid analog who taps into the primal psionic energy of the living world and learns to affect plants and animals (gaining Wild Empathy and some druid-like features as well as more nature-themed psionic powers); or perhaps an Ecstatic, a mystic who revels in a wide range of sensory experiences and shares those experiences with others to make then gain some understanding of her skills; or even an Unchained Mind, who uses unfettered psionic energy to bolster his body and transform into a juggernaut of physical devastation. The prestige classes from the Mind's Eye articles showed a greater variety than the ones in the Complete Psionic.
Chapter Three: Feats present a large array of new psionic feats. Most of them are, of course, psionic feats, and generally lean on using psionic focus to improve an existing ability - Deep Vision, for instance, which increases the range of your darkvision while you're psionically focused. There's a large selection of racial feats, but most of them are designed simply to let you use a naturally psionic race's powers more often or in a slightly different way. A set of exotic mind blade feats allow creation of soulknives who use mind blades that are versions of exotic weapons, such as the dwarven urgrosh. Some of the feats are clearly underpowered (+1 natural armor bonus? For a whole feat?) or weren't edited (double manifester level for the half-giant's stomp racial power - which is not level-dependent). Some of the feats allow gith characters to leverage their racial powers into different powers, but how many people are really going to spend a feat to be able to swap concussion for psionic knock?
Along with the large range of racial and psionic feats are a couple of new categories: Host feats and illithid heritage feats. Host feats are for people who host benevoled psionic entities, such as the kalashar from Eberron The host feats generally allow one use per day of a low-level power from an either/or list. The illithid feats focus on making the character more illithid-like, by gaining tentacles, improving use of compulsion powers, improving the mind blast, and eventually learning to extract and eat brains.
Lastly, a small amount of general and metapsionic feats round out some gaps, thereby allowing manifesters to have equivalents of the Transdimensional Spell feat, Practiced Caster feat, and so on.
Chapter Four: Powers, Mantles, and Items provides a hefty list of new psionic powers. It includes updated listings for the psion and psychic warrior, as well as the lurk listing and the mantles for divine minds and ardents. A host of new powers are introduced, including a few healing powers so that the ardent can serve as a cleric in a pinch, and several powers that are specific to mantle lists. The "Stygian" type powers are introduced, giving psions the ability to manipulate negative energy in a wide variety of ways, and tying to certain feats that improve use of Stygian powers. There are even two new powers that can cause enemies' heads to explode. Most of the powers seem reasonably balanced, with the glaring exception of Temporal Reiteration: A power that allows the manifester to, as a swift action, not cause the round to count against his limited-duration abilities. Apply this to a high-level Metamind (from the Expanded Psionics Handbook) using the Font of Power (unlimited power points) class feature, and the abuse is potentially rampant . . . but for one out of over fifty powers, this is a relatively minor amount of feature error.
After the power listings are a few pieces of new psionic goodies, namely psionic items. As with the items from the Expanded Psionics Handbook, many of them are quite curious but not necessarily the sort of thing you'd purchase over a +1 sword. The stacked psionatrixes offer a new possibility, though, and an inventive DM could find all manner of clever ways to use stacked psionatrixes to create adventure hooks by having psionic characters pursue the circuit that will make their psionatrix just that much better by unlocking a new hidden combination . . . somewhat like the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon in Planescape: Torment.
Lastly, a pair of psionically-themed locations flesh out the remainder of the chapter. These two locations have a strong psionic flavor and provide power benefits to characters who can locate them and survive their hazards. As such they are instant adventure hooks, like the locations from the Planar Handbook.
Chapter Five: Constructs and Creatures has a host of new monsters and psionic constructs. Many continue the crystal or ectoplasm themes, and the chapter includes new variants on astral constructs. Most DMs will simply treat this as a small collection of additional CRs to throw against the player group.
Chapter Six: Character Options introduces a new psionic race, the synad. In keeping with the "humans, but with a weird power" theme (like the maenads, elan, xeph, and more), the synads are basically humanoid but have a three-track mind. This affords them certain bonuses against mind control and a small boost to certain knowledge or mental abilities. In addition to the synad is the optional core class, the erudite, which first appeared in Dragon magazine. The erudite is a psion with the ability to learn new powers (like a wizard) but with a limited number of possible different manifestations per day. It would be like a wizard with the ability to spontaneously cast, but once he had cast sleep and magic missile, those would be his only spells available for the rest of the day. The erudite might be interesting as a variant but its thematic niche is unclear. The options chapter also introduces six "psionic houses," which are flavorful descriptions of possible hidden secret bloodlines or societies built around the various psionic disciplines; and racial class progressions, which are 20-level advancement tables for the various psionic races that have ECLs, like the half-giant or the githyanki. Why the writers felt that it was necessary to extend a table out 20 levels for an ECL 1 race like the half-giant is unknown, but it is useful to have the ECL 0 versions of the races for campaigns starting at first level - in effect, the player can play an "immature" or not-fully-empowered version of a powerful race and gain the race's features after gaining a few levels. At the very end of the book are guidelines for epic-level characters, which provide the usual bonus feat progressions and such, with no surprises.
Overall, the Complete Psionic adds some nicely flexible new core classes, although their inclusion in a game may be problematic. Most of the new powers are ripe for use by your existing psionic campaign characters, if any. The prestige classes could've stood some more "oddball" variety or envelope-pushing archetypes. Still, most of the content is highly readable and usable. The primary impression is erring on the side of caution (i.e. trying to keep things from being perceived as "overpowered").
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