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 was ok. But not great.

It needs an editor to fix some of the sloppy language. People simply speak in a way that's unbelievable in their circumstances. Or the author intrudes with a pop culture reference we didn't need.

We start by having the story fed to us as present-day interspersed with backstory. Then this style gets dropped.

There's a lot that happens in these pages, but nothing really grabbed my attention or made me care too much about the characters. Out of the 6 or 7 characters (see, I forget) only two are realised, the rest are wallpaper, which is a shame. And the author spends a lot of time making other people remind us of how brave and good the main character is (or was) without actually showing it in anything she does.

The middle section is a little muddled with action too. The ship is huge (aren't they all?) but aside from descriptions of rooms being a bit big I didn't really feel it. The fight scene feels a bit like it takes place in a cupboard, and I had a hard time following who was supposed to be in danger. I never felt any concern for the characters.

What lets it down most is the lack of originality. Everything here is something I've read before. Especially the final act.

I'm pretty sure there's going to be a sequel, and I'll probably pick it up, because I'm a big fan of the people-find-an-abandonned-spaceship genre, which is what lead me here to this book in the first place. But I won't expect it to blow me away: I'll expect it to help me pass a day by the pool.

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.

I enjoyed the overall plot and story of Fluency though I felt this was challenge after challenge hitting the main character without anything tying them together. It picked up by the end though which left it open for a sequel and pulled this book back into the 3-star range. Overall: a good, quick read.