2015 read #25: Diamond Mask by Julian May.

Diamond Mask by Julian May
461 pages
Published 1994
Read from May 15 to May 23
Rating: ★★½ out of 5

Milieu baaaabiiies
We make our dreams come truuue
Milieu baaaabiiies
Teilhard's Omega Point too!

Yeah, I dunno. The second book in the Galactic Milieu Trilogy inches us closer, in years, to the start of the Galactic Rebellion, but yet again dawdles about showing us scenes from the childhood of its titular paramount metapsychic operant, as well as a protracted psycho killer plotline that has not transmuted into interesting in between volumes. May's narrator, Uncle Rogi, promised that Diamond Mask would track down the metapsychic killers Fury and Hydra in this volume, but alas, actually resolving this plotline did not seem to be May's intention. We were promised that we would actually see the Galactic Rebellion in the final volume of the series devoted to the Galactic Rebellion, but with the psycho killers still on the loose, I don't hold out much hope for nuanced character-based conflict and scenes of spectacular space opera.

Diamond Mask is a minuscule improvement over Jack the Bodiless by virtue of moving much of the action off Earth and onto colorful exoplanets -- no more in utero discussions of divinity and incarnation while Bigfeet peep in the window of a Canadian manger, thankfully. But the need for a good chunk of these scenes never becomes clear. The Family Ghost may insist that Dorothea needs to grow up on the "Scottish" planet Caledonia, but all we see is her getting dropped off, meeting some broad caricatures, and then her leaving again a few years later. I think that it's May who "needed" Dorothea to grow up on Caledonia, because she had this nice nifty planet she wanted to describe in detail. Worldbuilding as substitute for character development.

Character development does not seem to be May's strength in general. Her villains are motivated by pop psychology: forgotten childhood molestation gives rise to a murderously unsubtle "Fury," while the future leader of the Rebellion only reaches that point because he was tempted by a proverbial devil on his shoulder. I may be grading this too generously. But at least it held my interest somewhat better than Jack, and best of all, I'm only one additional volume away from finishing this series once and for all. Maybe the next one will have some kind of payoff.