Camber Maypole was human once, an avid climber and chief medical officer aboard the launch crew of the Vera Rubin, a colony ship headed for a distant planet. But the day before launch, she was scrubbed from the mission for "insubordination." Against her will, her consciousness was digitized and sent through space to a distant moon in a distant star system.

Varanasi.

Centuries later, the AI controlled Vera Rubin approaches its destination. Aboard the ship, Seraph Stone, down-on-his-luck farmer, father, and alcoholic, receives a message from a long-dead member of the original crew. He's told to contact Camber Maypole, who waits for their arrival with thousands of immortal exiles like her, lost in a digital paradise. The message warns of a cabal of digitized minds who threaten the lives of the arriving colonists, if they even make it that far. Starvation, political division, and a cult of extremists threaten to tear the ship apart from the inside. Faced with a choice between his family and humanity, Seraph is determined to save them both but risks losing it all.

As Maypole turns from her role as doctor to warrior, she begins to understand why she was sent to Varanasi and that there is more to being human than your hardware.

For fans of Altered Carbon and Snow Crash.