Reviews
NASA finds an alien ship in space and for the next decades they start creating a recon mission to visit the ship and find information about this alien society and why they left the ship abandoned. They decide to send a group of six people, one of them world renowned linguist Jane Halloway to figure out the alien language. They travel for several months toward the location of the ship and despite believing to be abandoned when they are about to dock everything lit up. And there's a voice in Jane's head when she steps into the ship. This book started really strongly for me. It had basically everything I loved Aliens, NASA and secret languages. I loved the first half so much, I read it basically in a a couple of hours because I was so excited. I loved the flashbacks of how Jane was recruited, and of her early life. And I loved the tension when they got in the ship and they were hesitant because they didn't know what they would find. I also really like those first explorations, but after that everything went downhill for me. The presence in the ship, Ei'Brai, speaks through the mind and I just wasn't into the mind games that followed. Overall, Fluency it's a great sci fi book with a lot of suspense and tension. If you are into that kind of stuff, go ahead you'll love it. Unfortunately, not exactly my cup of tea.
Not great literature, but a fun romp. I'd rather read more Wool than the sequel though, and Wool isn't high on my list. Fluency is good as a summer beach book or on a long flight.
I just curse the heavens I found this before the whole series was written. Argh! I want to read the next one!
Review initially posted on The Book Unicorn If you’ve been following my reviews, you know how much I love space/alien stories. So when I read the description for this book–a group of NASA astronauts going to explore a mysterious alien spaceship–I was so on board. It didn’t turn out to be quite as amazing as I’d hoped, but this was still an interesting concept for a book! One thing I really did appreciate about this story was the focus on character development. Too often in hard scifi books the characters get lost amidst a sea of technology and science. While I find it interesting to read about all the cool, futuristic inventions, I need characters to really keep me connected to the story. And this book had some nice, solid characters. They got on my nerves occasionally, and there were a few cringe-worthy cliches, but overall I really enjoyed the character development in Fluency. The plot moved a bit slow for my taste. Even though there seemed to be a lot happening, it still felt like parts of the story just dragged. I had a hard time staying focused on what was happening sometimes. But even during the slower parts, I was still interested enough in the plot to keep reading and find out how it all ended. Despite the issues I had, I still enjoyed this book! the concept was interesting and got my mind whirling. I could have used a little bit more of a solid, gripping plot, and the characters needed a little bit of work. But all in all, I had a good time reading Fluency!
