"Medusa Uploaded"

Emily Devenport has written several novels under various pseudonyms including one which was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick award. She currently studies Geology and works as a volunteer at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

Devenport applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Medusa Uploaded, and reported the following:

Midway down page 69 in Medusa Uploaded I read:

Unhappy plans were beginning to manifest in the halls of my mind. They were bloody-handed creatures...

And that is, absolutely, representative of the rest of the book. In fact, it makes a pretty good summary. Oichi is a ruthless person, but she's got good reason. She was forged by harsh circumstances, and has spent the majority of her life pretending to obey. The consequences of being exposed as a dissident are brutal, but it's not just the loss of her life that frightens Oichi. She has a master plan. It's the core of her existence. And if she's discovered, that plan will fail. So she's willing to kill to prevent that from happening.

Yet Oichi has also been raised with an appreciation of beauty, of intelligence and integrity. On page 69, she is confronted with the need to kill someone she admires. He has seen through her disguise, and he could expose her. The fact that he has children to protect makes him more dangerous. She's going to have to decide what to do about him. And Oichi has the fortitude to do what needs to be done.

But things aren't going to go as expected, and how she improvises is what drives this story. If you haven't read my book yet, and this post leads you to check out page 69, I hope you'll want to flip back to the beginning, because Oichi's unhappy plans lead to some unexpected places.

Visit Emily Devenport's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue