3.5 stars ( )

I really enjoyed thus book. The characters seemed to develope themselves well... The dream scenes weemre dreams until they werent and the story moved along at a reasonable pace. The reader stayed in character well and was not confusing. Overall a pretty good book ( )

WOW. I read it in five hours. Did not move, eat or almost breathe. Amazing. Ends with a strong female protagonist. Great storyline, world building, and first encounter. The premise will stick with you for hours. ( )

There are several sub-genre titles this novel would fit under, I choose any and all. It needs a wide audience because it is: Inventive, Fun, Engaging, Surprising, Humanist, Science-based, Complex, other words that aren't coming to me right now -- and it ends well! And THERE WILL BE MORE! ( )

DNF. I realize she gets a lot of crap about the romance aspect of this book. That's because it's ridiculous. Also, the romance seems to consist of the guy thinking about her ass, and her not thinking about him at all. I do believe there's a place for romance in space, but the middle of a first contact isn't it. Priorities people... ( )

2.5 stars round up to 3.....

In Fluency, a mysterious alien ship is hovering above the earth, its intentions completely unknown to the governments on Earth. A team is assembled to travel to the ship and attempt to make contact with its inhabitants and learn about its technologies.

The main character, Dr. Jane Holloway, is a linguist who was brought along to learn the alien language and facilitate communications between the two species.

Unfortunately, Jane is the only truly fleshed out character in the book. The other characters are one-dimensional stereotypes found in "B" movies that contain combination military/scientific exploratory teams. I also found the writing too basic to be interesting and the romance became too much of a factor for my personal tastes.

Fluency is the first part of a series that I will not continue. ( )

Pleasantly surprised by this intriguing story. Nothing too mind-blowing here, just some good old fashioned sci-fi. Looking forward to the sequel!

Audiobook notes: very nicely read, no noticeable pronounciation gaffes. ( )

This started off really strong, but it gradually lost its grip on me as the story developed. ( )

Not as good as Rama but in the same vein. The unreliable narrator was unfortunately predictably unreliable :/ ( )

A fun, action-heavy, and occasionally thoughtful Sci-Fi romp. The writing is occasionally schlocky, but that isn't necessarily a point against it. There are some compelling questions in here that unfold in a very satisfying way as the book progresses. This story would be entirely at home as a film or TV series without losing much of anything. It does suffer a little for being an obvious first entry in a series, but there's still a great deal to like about it. ( )

I enjoyed reading this book. I would have given the book 4 stars with more excitement right after finishing it if it was not for relatively harder vocabulary used.

Without ruining the plot, I can say the book is more leaning toward interpersonal relationships and developing the characters an alien environment rather than being about the a hard sci-fi experience of dealing with unknowns and in such an environment.

Probably the reason for more than usual flashbacks for a book of this size is to well introduce the main characters which are going to drive the next series of books on the storyline.

I will read the next books in the series if/when they are out, hopefully we will see some actions from Speroancora ;-) ( )

By my count, the bulk of this book takes place while the main character walks around 600 feet. Shouldn't work *at all* but it really does and very well. ( )

Jane Holloway is recruited as a linguist to join an expedition to an alien spacecraft discovered in the asteroid belt.

I kept thinking of "Arrival" for the first couple of chapters but came to appreciate it more on its own terms after that. I was starting to get a bit irritated about how much of the action rewound because whoops, this was just a virtual reality test by Ei'Brai while a character was in the healing pods. I will read the next one and see how it goes now that Jane and Ei'Brai's partnership has been cemented but I don't know if I will continue after that. ( )

I may be taking a bit of a different view on just who is the main character of this tale.

I'm sure most people will latch on to the leading female for her guts or supposedly for her language abilities which get nullified by the oncoming story. At least I agree that one complaint is valid against this tale: I expected a first contact story with an actual deduction of language and communication. Isn't it right in the title?

Alas, no. We get a high-tech pill solution, but I got over that really quickly because the tale was taking me some very interesting places.

Dreams, old civilizations, a wealth of technology at your fingertips, space-travel... even becoming a visceral part of a spaceship. That stuff is awesome, and I dug it, man. :)

So other than her and her slow-burn romantic interest who she saves on occasion, then just WHO IS THE MAIN CHARACTER?

It's the Alien Navigator. :) He's got a real personality on him. He's behind everything. Utterly everything. I can't help but be fascinated and impressed at the nature and scope of his lies and how willing he is to DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to achieve his goals. :) He really did have to get very creative, and I think I feel closest to him out of all the characters. :) He's the real star of the show. :)

Maybe it's just me! :) But I really enjoyed the hell out of my squiddy friend. ( )

Interesting - my xenolinguistic sort of thing.

Ishould have finished this far sooner, but ... you know, when you have a Kindle your queue of "books being read" seems (at least mine) to grow without bound.

An interesting story of a NASA expedition to an abandoned alien ship. The linguist is critical to learning how the ship works and what can (and should) be done with it. A cliff hanger of course.... ( )

Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells and narrated by Susanna Burney is absolutely fabulous! A mix of characters on the way to an alien spaceship only to find it not how they expected. The crew member they brought to learn and communicate with the aliens actually succeeds but not in the way anyone expected! So many twists and turns! Is the alien friend or foe? So exciting! I want to follow this series!
The narration really brought this book together! Wonderful job! ( )

sex is gross. or at least it is here ( )

I loved the sense of joyous imagination that pervaded this book. It was about discovery and adventure, not about conquering and war. That's enough to make me overlook any other flaws it may have, such as: (a) because of the nature of communication in this book the reader is constantly being told how everyone feels, rarely shown, (b) the book is flipping the tropes but at the same time reinforcing some of them and (c) also I loathe Alan Bergen. I want to go on an adventure with Jane and Ei'Brai. ( )

For 60 years, NASA has been watching a derelict alien spacecraft drifting in the asteroid belt near Mars. When a mission is finally ready to make first contact, Dr. Jane Holloway—a linguist—is recruited to join the team of pilots, engineers and a doctor. When they finally reach the ship, labeled the _target, they find it deserted except for an entity that can communicate telepathically. Jane is the only one open to such contact and the crew soon becomes suspicious of her mental health. Dr. Alan Bergen, however, does believe her and attempts to aid her in understanding what happen to the race of beings on the spacecraft that were lost in a catastrophic incident. This is a fast-paced story filled with just enough science to satisfy the diehard sci-fi fans alongside a compelling romance between Jane and Bergen. I couldn’t put it down! ( )

Fluency

This was high adventure with enough science that I didn't feel overwhelmed. The technology was very feasible and a lot of it we are striving for now. I really enjoyed the alien that they contact. I would say more, but don't want to give it away. Who know there is even cockroaches in space. ( )

I was all set to love Fluency: it’s a first contact story with a linguist protagonist, which is a combination I’ve liked in the past, and I liked the heroine - smart, passionate and big on fairness. Unfortunately, she's teamed up with an arrogant, belligerent love interest who is largely motivated by his sex drive (and whose interior monologue had me flinching). The other characters are made of cardboard, but suffice to scoot along an entertaining SF romp that goes from first contact thriller to gung ho action heroics before it loses all sense of proportion and looks for a kitchen sink to throw in for giggles.

I'm being glib - awkward love interest aside, this is an entertaining if trope-driven potboiler and I'm tempted to continue with the sequel, so it's got its points!

Full review. ( )

Excellent first book in a promising series. ( )

After reading many of the negative reviews here, it looks like people picked this up expecting cerebral Hard Sci-Fi, a la "Contact" or "Blindsight," and what they got was Hollywood action, a la "Sphere." Expectations were blown to smithereens. The science is glossed over and half-baked, while the focus is on sex and action--and psychology, although the exploration of that psychology may be on the shallow Hollywood side of things.

Personally, I liked "Sphere," and I liked "Fluency" for the same reasons. A group of humans are the first people to enter an unknown spaceship and make contact with something that affects them in strange ways. It may give them powers. It may kill them. It affects each person differently, and they need to figure out why. The people swiftly get tested to their psychological limits.

Maybe this ought to be classified as Sociological Sci-Fi. Whatever the classification, I read it within a day, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

To me, the worst quality of this story was an abrupt ending that left too much unaddressed. I love a great series, but I'm unsure where these characters are going, or what their goals are, and that's not good. This series doesn't seem to have a clear path. I'd feel more confident about it if The Swarm was more believable and well-defined ... but they're just cockroaches in space. All of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy can't handle them. Um, really? Why the hell not? There's a flimsiness to this old trope. If "Fluency" offered some hint as to why The Swarm is so invincible, then I'd eagerly snatch up the next book. But right now, I feel as if too many ideas in this book were half-baked, and the rest of the series is likely to be the same way. Why would NASA scientists torture alien visitors with live dissection? Why would they keep alien contact a secret from the public? How could such a large government agency hide a major secret like that for 60 years? Why would they choose a trigger-happy gunman to lead a first contact team with possible alien contact? Wouldn't they do a more thorough psych eval? Why bring an armed militia into space? How can they keep the public from discovering that this team is visiting somewhere other than Mars? If the advanced aliens are so benign and gentle, why do they use capital punishment without a trial? Why do they use the same old military hierarchy? Why would the advanced alien civilization allow a situation where their pet navigator is stranded alone in space? If they were all linked telepathically, then what stops them from having mob rule and voting on everything? If the linguist is so sensitive to foreign cultures, then why the heck did she react with disgust and fury when the alien invaded her privacy? For someone whom we're told is tolerant, she seemed remarkably intolerant.

Due to those grievances, I never got fully immersed in the story. However, this was a very fun, light, and easy read, with a style reminiscent of Michael Crichton. I had a good time! The plot had several surprise twists which kept me smiling and turning pages. I may pick up the sequel, depending on reviews. ( )

Here’s the thing. Since the 1960’s NASA has known about the stationary alien spacecraft in the Greater Astroid Belt. They’ve kept quiet about it while waiting for technology to be developed to reach it.

Six astronauts launch into space to explore the ship in hopes of reverse engineering it’s technology. With no signs of life in all those years, they presumed it was empty. They were wrong.

I’ve just recently started reading science fiction again so I didn’t know what to expect with this book. What I got was action almost from the start. Once the crew enters the ship, actually right on the threshold, an alien presence makes itself known.

Jane Holloway, a linguist specializing in ancient languages, was selected to be our Earth Ambassador, and the alien communicated with her. Just her. No one else could hear it.

When the crew starts showing strange symptoms of an alien disease, the group dynamics crumble. They become paranoid. Delusional. Dangerous.

I couldn’t help but compare parts of the book to Sphere and First Contact. An invisible alien, alien contamination, mind warping. You add all this together and you get humans thinking aliens will be like us, think like us.

This story wouldn’t have worked without Jane. She’s the one who is quick to remind the others that this is an alien intelligence. It won’t act the way we expect. It’s far advanced from us. It will have it’s own agenda.

When the author described the ship and some of the alien technology, I once again drew from many movies so I could visualize for myself. Mainly from the Alien movies. For the alien, I actually visualized from an old Star Trek episode.

Being able to ‘see’ the story, I became immersed in the mission and characters. Most of them I could take or leave. They had their roles to play in the mission, but weren’t all that fleshed out.

Jane was the star and I enjoyed watching her move from being insecure to taking charge.

Bergen, the aeronautics engineer, was her love interest. The romance wasn’t a big deal, and could probably have been left out. It did make sense though. Isolated for ten months in space, someone is bound to connect with someone else.

There’s Walsh, the commander. He’s the self important type. His way is the right way and all that. A pain in the butt, is what he is.

Gibbs is what I call a handy man. He can do a little bit of everything and he plays the role of comic relief. I figured if anyone was going to die, he’d be first.

Ajaya is the flight surgeon, and I didn’t feel anything about her one way or the other. She seemed to follow the most popular opinions.

Tom Compton is the pilot and he too came across as wishy washy. That worked though, as he’s trained to fly machines, not to deal with the drama of the group.

I mentioned the alien. There’s more than one kind on the ship. The others are the ones I compared to a Star Trek episode. Quite nasty, and I wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t have some deadly aliens.

The technology and jargon are easy to understand, the characters make the story work, the action gets intense, and the alien is unique and really out there.

I’m glad I read this book, as it’s a good taste of science fiction, and I hope the author takes the story further. ( )

★★★½☆
An interesting sci-fi that tells a very realistic scenario of what could happen if a ship was discovered around Earth space. In this book the author has recreated the mood of many sci-fi movies, fortunately without using the panic card where humans go on a rampage of fear. Instead she went with the adventurous feel of an exploratory group of people in a first contact mission. Yeah, obviously the government as its own ideas considering that they are sending a goup of people on an unknown "dead" alien ship...they are not prepared for what can happen once on board, even if the majority is military trained. They can only think about different possibilities and make plans accordingly... translated? a plan B is always a good idea. Still, as you can imagine, it doesn't take much for things to get complicated.
The MCs are the truly interesting and original part of the book. Dr. Jane Holloway is a linguist who can learn quickly new languages and because of that is asked to join the expedition. The author doesn't really explain how Jane's abilieties came to be but it's also true that in the world there are many things that can't be explained (I don't know if I like this but it's a fact). I liked quite a lot the mental relationship between her and the alien creature. It's a link that grows slowly but steadily during the book and makes possible for the reader to know Jane's mind (and not only her actions) and the alien as well. However I have to say my favourite part was at the end, where the true adventure is starting. Infact, the rest of the story was a bit too slow...things seemed to go nowhere for a while. Now we have to wait for the next book in the series to discover if the promise of a great adventure in the space will come to fruition.

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