Fluency

By: Jennifer Foehner Wells

Narrated by: Susanna Burney

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960's. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it.

The ship itself remained silent, drifting.

Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it's an adventure she can't refuse.

The ship isn't vacant, as they presumed.

A disembodied voice rumbles inside Jane's head, "You are home".

Jane fights the growing doubts of her colleagues as she attempts to decipher what the alien wants from her. As the derelict ship devolves into chaos and the crew gets cut off from their escape route, Jane must decide if she can trust the alien's help to survive.

©2014 Jennifer Foehner Wells (P)2014 Jennifer Foehner Wells

A Great First Book -- I await the rest

I would put this in the same league as the Kris Longknife, Lost Fleet, and Casandra Kresnov series. Interesting story, good character development, and the narration is top notch.

Really enjoyed this.

Well written with a great story. Charactrrs seem realistic . Bettet than most of the stuff avaiable.

Not my thing

I am a fan of contemporary science fiction, and this story fit the bill, but there was far too much "magic" in it for me.

Enjoyed it very much

It captured my imagination.
I immersed into the story quickly.
Having read hardly any science fiction with female main characters it is a refreshing difference in perspective.
Excellent choice in narrator.

Hindered by romance angle, entertaining though

When NASA’s secret small team of specialist experts reach the derelict alien BDO (Big Dumb Object) in Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama”, the reader got a fabulous tour of soaring wonder and possibility. When it happens here, we instead get the inner monologue of an adolescent girl-crush which is frequently interrupted by some space opera. There is a heavy dose of romance in this debut novel, and a lot of wish-fullfillment that makes far too much of the plot predictable as our protagonist, expert (and civilian) linguist Dr. Jane Holloway, overcomes a series of challenges that stem from the less capable (and military) men that accompany her. I found parallels with Gary Gibson’s “Stealing Light", which also features a heroine in psychic possession of an alien derelict starship, as well as James Cameron’s “Aliens”, which had similar survival-horror action scenes. Here in “Fluency”, Jane is too consistently successful for the dramatic tension to build sufficiently, and the other characters seem accessory. The pacing is greatly improved by a second flashback narrative alternating with the main one, providing both exposition into the mission as well as depth for the character. I felt like the opportunity was missed to create a wildly alien culture, finding instead a slightly varied flavor of humanoid Star Trek style beings, although a wider field of cosmic players is alluded to. Foehner Wells’ forthcoming follow-up novel, “Remanence”, will hopefully delve into these more imaginative possibilities, and downplay or even forego the romance altogether.

Great story and pace.

The story was intriguing and had a dull moment.The narrotor did a great job narrating every character. Looking forward to book 2 in the series.

pretty good

I liked the premise and most of the book. there's really too much cursing. I don't mind some language. this just seems to be an over the top amount. regardless, I liked the story.

Feminist Scifi

Great first encounter scifi idea, written by a feminist for feminists. Like an Ann Rice novel, the stereotypical male characters are all either stereotypically male...and all female characters have full control. Awkward teen-like female angst sex moments and obviously trite expletives galore (supposedly to entertain male readers). "Damn, he had a nice a**. ", "Damn, he felt good." (yawn) Gee, that's nice. Can we know a little more about the science behind the derelict space ship now? Worst story ending in history. Well, not really an ending. More like the author forgot to finish the last paragraph before submitting for publishing. "I don't know where I'll go." Oh, ok, whatever. A note to the author; space squids have already been done (Stephan Baxter, Manifold series) and Holloway sounds a lot like Arraway (Contact). Also, it's probably a good idea not to state the entire main plot in the first few sentences. After listening through this unoriginal dominant female diatribe, I'm reminded why it's best to just stick to classic male authors who generally maintain the scifi in scifi; namely Sir Arthur C. Clark. I highly recommend his Rendezvous With Rama first-encounter novel over this teen reading any day.

Science Fiction without the science

The story was strong and held me. I didn't want to put it down, except when it made basic blunders in science and space travel. Unfortunately, it did this A LOT.

Make no mistake, no research was done for this book, far from it. Nor any basic Google searches on NASA or manned spaceflight or radiation, or anything else. Over and over again incredibly naive things were stated as fact. In addition, the characters were idiots and behaved like playground children, lots of attitude and no thought, definitely not highly trained astronauts with a year of training for the mission. All of this broke the continuity and the enjoyment for me.

I liked the story. I really did. But it almost hurt to read it, the horrible science and the things that the characters were saying and doing were just so stupid. Here's hoping the author learns something about science and spaceflight before the next book.

Several common characteristics I don't like.

There are several common characteristics of scifi i don't like, but that keep popping up.
(1) Human/humanity centrism. I find the idea that our species is in anyway significant or important to anyone besides ourselves to be repugnant. This books attaches religious and messianic significance to humanity, ridiculous. A far more likely scenario is that we encounter far more advanced species that have known about us for thousands of years, but chose to leave us alone because we're so stupid, or decides to take over before we destroy ourselves.
(2) Super advanced star flight capable species being religious. If humanity is any indication, then technological and scientific progress is inversely related to religiosity. The more advanced you are, the less religious. It is more likely that organized religion would be a ridiculous to star travelers as human sacrifice is to us.
These are the two that turned me off to this book.