What I’m Reading: FLUENCY by Jennifer Foehner Wells

I like to troll through the “Also Boughts” on my Amazon sales page and see what pops up. That’s how I ran across Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells.

Told from the point of view of Dr. Jane Holloway, an expert on extinct languages, Fluency is a classic first contact story written with the kind of “old school sci-fi” feel that I love. (I like to call this vibe OST, or Original Star Trek.)

In the 60s, NASA discovered a massive alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt of our system. No movement, no communications, it just sits there. They kept the existence of the Target a secret while they developed a space program to reach it. Now, nearly 60 years later, Dr Holloway and a small crew arrive at the Target’s doorstep. As the saying goes, the lights are on, but no one’s home—until Jane begins to experience strange hallucinations.

Author Wells takes us on a sci-fi sleigh ride of some of the best tropes in the business: nanites and battle armor, interstellar pests and telepathy, and a ship custodian not unlike the Navigators from DUNE. Wells breathes new life into these well-trod ideas. For example, in Fluency telepathy is not some kind of superpower, it’s an ancient method of communication called Mensententia, a common language latent within the human genome but lost to the human race. Only Jane, who spends her days studying lost languages possesses the ability to accept the Custodian’s mind connection. The Custodian is more than a little frustrated by the short-sightedness of humans with regards to telepathy: “You are conceptually aware of individuals on your world with this ability, yet it seems your culture resolutely denies the possibility of its existence.”

Still, the Target had a mission and there is ample evidence of a once-thriving crew, so it’s not too long until we find out what the Custodian really wants—and it’s a big ask.

Wells writes with an easy style that makes the pages melt away and she paced the story so that I was always wanting to read just one more chapter.

If, like me, you’re a sucker for a well-told tale of intrigue in space, then I’d recommend a ride on Fluency.

David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. Check out his website for a free sample of his work.