Diamond Mask [Anglais] [Poche]

In spite of a confusing opening section, those who persevere through Book II of the intricate Galactic Milieu Trilogy will discover an intriguing piece of work. Set in the year 2113 and told through the memoirs of Rogatien Remillard, the story looks back on events that took place half a century earlier, when humanity became part of a vast galactic civilization. Remillard's family, virtually immortal and psychically gifted, has become Earth's most powerful force. On the death of the evil Victor Remillard in 2040, an insane metapsychic creature known as Fury comes into being. Fury uses several corrupt younger Remillards, known collectively as Hydra, as its agent against his Great Enemy, the powerful young mutant Jon Remillard (from Book I, Jack the Bodiless ). Equal in power to both Jon and Fury is the young Dorothea Macdonald, who comes to be known as Diamond Mask. Will she join forces with Jon to oppose Fury, or will that frightful entity use her for its own purposes? May holds out the promise of answers in the trilogy's concluding volume, Magnificat. Meanwhile, readers should be forewarned not to peek at the final page here, where the Fury's secret is revealed. Then again, maybe it isn't.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Set in the years between humanity's acceptance into the "galactic milieu" and its achievement of telepathic "unity" with other metapsychic races, this sequel to Jack the Bodiless ( LJ 12/91) follows the early life of Dorothea Macdonald, a young woman striving to deny her formidable mental powers yet destined to become one of the world's most powerful minds. Dorothea's fate links her with the dynastic Remillard family and the psychopathic killer known only as "Fury," forcing her to accept the keys that will unlock her talents. The author of the "Pliocene Saga" maintains a personal focus on her luminary characters, opening their private lives to intense scrutiny while at the same time expanding the boundaries of an imaginative future world. Rich in intrigue and vibrating with creative energy, this is a superb addition to sf collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This is the second book in May's Galactic Milieu trilogy that began with Jack the Bodiless (1991) and, when completed, will constitute a full-scale prequel to her immensely popular Saga of Pliocene Exile. The central figure here is the potently but secretly metapsychic woman Dorotea, who comes to be known as Diamond Mask. She becomes the object of competition between Jack the Bodiless and the madman Fury, and in the course of surviving their battle, she realizes her own extraordinary powers. May is definitely a writer of the throw-in-everything-by-the-double-handful school, which occasionally makes for soggy pacing. But it also makes for an enormous cast of vivid characters and a world with an admirably lived-in quality, complete with the small-group politics of the metapsychics and their alien allies. May has largely earned her impressive following, which makes this book a virtually mandatory acquisition. Roland Green --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Book two of May's Galactic Milieu trilogy (Jack the Bodiless, 1991) is a leisurely account of the events that led up to the Metapsychic Rebellion of 2083 and precipitated the action of May's previous tetralogy, the Saga of Pliocene Exile. In the main, this continues the account of the psychically gifted (``operant'') Remillard family and humanity's growing involvement with the psychic-powered association of alien races know as the Galactic Milieu. Fury, the malign entity generated by the death of the evil Vic, still lurks undiscovered inside someone's head; its human extension, the Hydra (composed of four Remillard scions) continues to work Fury's will, slaying its victims in an agonizing psychic vampirism. Leading the search for Fury is the Paramount operant, Jack; eventually joining Jack will be Dee, a Paramount who only reluctantly comes into her full powers and for most of the proceedings is hostile to Jack. Despite many hints, we never learn who Fury is, though two more of its Hydra heads are lopped off. Grandmaster Marc invents a powerful psychic amplifier and, dangerously, shows himself vulnerable to Fury. In the end, planet Caledonia is saved from a disastrous earthquake by a metaconcert of Jack, Dee, and Marc. Stay tuned for the Rebellion itself, which May promises for volume three. Again patchy and irritatingly inconclusive; but May handles both the psychic complications and the family interactions with pleasing skill, and the upshot is another probable crowd-pleaser- -though no place for newcomers to start. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

The 21st century was drawing to a close, and metapsychic humankind was poised at last to achieve Unity -- to be admitted into the group mind of the already unified alien races of the Galactic Milieu. But a growing corps of rebels was plotting to keep the people of Earth forever separate in the name of human individuality. And the rebels had a secret supporter: Fury, the insane metapsychic creatrue that would stop at nothing to claim humanity for itself. Fury's greatest enemy was the mutant genius Jack the Bodiless, whose power it craved. But Jack would never be a tool for Fury . . .
And so it turned to Dorothea Macdonald, a young woman who had spent a lifetime hiding her towering mindpowers from the best mind readers of the Milieu. But she could not hide them from Fury -- or from Jack. Time and again she rejected their advances, unwilling to be drawn into the maelstrom of galactic politics or megalomaniacal dreams. And in the end, no one -- not Jack, not Fury, not even the Galactic Milieu -- would be a match for the awesome powers of the girl who would come to be called Diamond Mask . . .

At the end of the twenty-first century, the metapsychic human race approaches its acceptance into the unified alien races of the Galactic Milieu, only to be threatened by a band of rebels that seeks to maintain humankind's individuality forever. Reprint.

I read Julian May's Pliocene Exile books long ago, and though I loved them, I confess I was a bit baffled by all the references to the rebellion, and to characters like Diamond Mask and Jack the Bodiless. So getting to edit (and read--at last!) the three books of the Galactic Milieu, which finally explain all those mysterious and tantalizing hints, was a real blast. They really do bring everything full circle, and I am more amazed than ever at a mind that could pull off such a thoroughly complex and rich cycle of stories. Just don't ask me to summarize them!
                                                        --Shelly Shapiro, Executive Editor