Fluency

An Auspicious Beginning

I thought that this was a great start to a promising series. The characters were believable, though I had a hard time keeping some of them apart. The alien language was interesting, but I wasn't sure why a telepathic language wouldn't just translate directly to terms we know. Sure, there are aspects that don't have neat translations that would need new terms, but it always felt a bit odd. The hyper evolved squid was cool, and he's quite a character. It says something that he and I would be frenemies at best. I'm looking forward to more. It's been a long time since I've picked up a good science fiction read. And even longer since i picked up one in a series that I want to continue.

After the discovery of a large starship in the orbit of Mars decades ago, NASA is finally sending a team to explore it. What awaits the them is the beginning of a classic space opera adventure with aliens, nanotech, humanity's origins and much more.

Ms Wells' worldcraft skills are nothing short of excellent. She weaves both world and characters together in a gripping storyline. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

This had a fun “classic sci-fi” feel to it; Wells has clearly been influenced by authors like Clarke and Bradbury, and tells an enjoyable story about first contact (minus, of course, the casual sexism that one tends to encounter with classic sci-fi stories).

One thing that bugged me about the story, though, was that a lot is made of the protagonist's abilities as a linguist - both within the narrative itself, and in the title of the book. And her linguist skills end up not really playing an important part in the story at all. Instead there's some handwavy sci-fi tech stuff that renders that ability unnecessary. There's a place for handwavy tech stuff in sci-fi, but here it felt like there was a more interesting story that could have been told than the one that ultimately was told.