Medusa Uploaded

March 1, 2018
A tense sci-fi thriller about a woman determined to remake her society--at any cost.Oichi Angelis is supposed to be insignificant. She's part of the working class on the generation ship Olympia, bionically modified to see and hear only what the Executives want her to, and expected to work for subsistence-level food and no other reward. But Oichi has her own agenda. She's not out to avenge her parents, killed when a powerful Executive blew up Olympia's sister ship, Titania. She's trying to continue their work, to pass on the vast database of classical and folk music her father compiled and spread the secret encoded within that database--modifications that make it possible to bond with the incredibly powerful Medusa AIs, modifications that will upend the Olympia's rigidly hierarchical social structure. On a generation ship halfway to its destination, Oichi is starting a revolution, and she'll kill whomever gets in the way. Oichi is a fascinating character, cold and implacable in pursuing her goals but capable of deep emotion. The worlds she inhabits, both physical and virtual, are richly detailed and gorgeously imagined. The revelations about the secret machinations behind the Olympia's journey don't all have as much impact as they should, but overall this is a gripping and unusual read, with a tense plot driven forward by Oichi's determination to change her world.Sci-fi fans will love exploring the world of Oichi's spaceship home and living inside the head of a not-quite-coldblooded killer.

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Starred review from March 19, 2018
Shape-shifting robots have nothing on the chameleon abilities of Oichi Angelis, the main character of this labyrinthine tale of revenge set on the generation ship Olympia. Oichi’s parents died when their ship was destroyed as a power play by the ruling Executives. Oichi was put into domestic service and rewired so that most of the data from her senses is sent to the Executives, leaving her “partially deaf, dumb, and blind”; she primarily navigates the world through taste and smell. She’s aided by her cybernetic connection to a sentient robot, Medusa, who sneaks her forbidden sensory data (which has the unfortunate effect of making her limitations feel less real and relevant for the reader than they otherwise might). Seeking revenge, Oichi infiltrates the inner circles of the elite. Dodging both assassination attempts and marriage proposals, Oichi pieces together the agendas of her Executive opponents and their hidden allies while recruiting more crew for links to Medusa units. Devenport, a Philip K. Dick Award–winner under her Maggy Thomas pseudonym, cleverly reveals the underworld of the typical shiny starships of fiction. She has an admirable willingness to spread out the action and allow her main character to be fallible, which adds depth to the work and prevents the story from devolving into a “chosen one” narrative. The home lives of her characters are as important to the plot as their occupations, further balancing and deepening the depictions. As the revolution begun by Oichi spirals out of her control, readers will be riveted.

April 15, 2018

Oichi Angelis is a worm, one of the lesser people, who works as a servant for the Executives of their generation starship, Olympia, after her old ship, along with her parents and scores of others, is destroyed. Suspected of insurgency by an Executive clan, Oichi is vented out of an airlock but is rescued by a Medusa unit, a sentient AI that reveals to Oichi that this world and ship are not what she has been led to believe. Presumed dead, Oichi begins to assassinate certain Executives and learns the truth about her identity--and that of everyone else--is a greater mystery than she first realized. VERDICT This fast-paced sf thriller by Devenport (Pale Lady) introduces a young woman whose pursuit of vengeance for her parents' deaths results in her leading an uprising in their clan-ruled metal world. An enticing start to a new space opera trilogy that will capture readers.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Oichi toils in the bowels of generation ship Olympia, cruising across the stars in service of the ruthless Executive clans. She hides a dangerous secret: among other modifications, Oichi's parents hid code in her brain amidst the data of an innocuous music-history module, allowing her to silently wreak deadly havoc among Executives to avenge the death of her family. After discovering artificial-intelligence units that assist and protect her, Oichi morphs into a half-human, half-AI kraken. As Oichi pursues justice, she discovers that the Executives may not be the purebred families they imagine themselves to be. Devenport (The Kronos Condition, 1997) grounds the reader in current culture that Oichi considers ancient history, weaving it in with classical music to evoke emotion, as this implanted knowledge makes her a master of such cultural references. There's more than ghosts in this machine, and as Oichi fearlessly plunges ahead, the reader can nearly feel the grasp of a tentacle as it reaches down from the ceiling to pluck an Executive to their death. A chilling tale of class warfare in deep space.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)