NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960's. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it.

The ship itself remained silent, drifting.

Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it's an adventure she can't refuse.

The ship isn't vacant, as they presumed.

A disembodied voice rumbles inside Jane's head, "You are home".

Jane fights the growing doubts of her colleagues as she attempts to decipher what the alien wants from her. As the derelict ship devolves into chaos and the crew gets cut off from their escape route, Jane must decide if she can trust the alien's help to survive.

Read & Listen

between reading the Kindle book and listening to Audible audiobook.
Add the audiobook for a reduced price of $7.49 after you get the Kindle book as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Enjoy a free audiobook + more

One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection to keep (you’ll use your first credit now).
Unlimited listening on select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.

Learn more about Membership

List Price: ~~$24.95~~

You Save: $2.96 (12%)

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

People who viewed this also viewed

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Remanence: Confluence, Book 2
Jennifer Foehner Wells
806
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
Inheritance: Confluence, Book 3
Jennifer Foehner Wells
383
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
Valence: Confluence, Book 4
Jennifer Foehner Wells
336
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
First Encounter: Ascension Wars, Book 1
Jasper T. Scott
1594
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
Revelation Space
Alastair Reynolds
1165
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial

Listening Length	10 hours and 29 minutes
Author	Jennifer Foehner Wells
Narrator	Susanna Burney
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	October 20, 2014
Publisher	Blue Bedlam Books
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00OPAK5BA
Best Sellers Rank	#86,635 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #573 in Science Fiction Romance (Audible Books & Originals) #1,610 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #4,194 in Science Fiction Romance (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		52%
4 star		30%
3 star		11%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Ann F.

Fascinating first contact story

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

There's a giant alien spaceship that appears to be stranded in the Solar System, and a small crew, including a linguist with an unusual ability to learn new languages among them. As she makes contact with the alien intelligence on the ship, she discovers disturbing information and situations as she tries to decide who she can trust and how she can save the intelligence, her crewmates, and, eventually, the future of Earth.

The author does a great job of layering complications, the kind one would expect in such a situation, but without loading too much on the reader at any one time. She also manages a solid balance of science and characterization, never sacrificing one for the other. There are some hand-waving elements, but not ridiculously so.

Overall recommended for hard and soft SF fans.

28 people found this helpful

Helpful

Loose Leaf Reviews

Good story, likable characters, but sometimes unrealistic

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

***Review contains spoilers***

I loved the idea behind this story, but there were some things that kept throwing me out of the story. The F bomb. Sometimes the dialogue felt unrealistic or simply repetitive, and Jane Holloway was apparently Wonder Woman while being super humble about it. That sounds harsher than I mean it. I actually liked Jane because she didn't give up.

It took a bit to adjust to the back and forth in time of some of the scenes, but I understand why it was necessary. The switch in points of view as well as moving back and forth in time helped augment the feeling that you couldn't believe everything that was happening. Jane is being manipulated the whole time, tested, and maneuvered into making the choice the alien Ei'Brai wants her to make. He even goes so far as to give Jane the sexual encounter she'd been dreaming of having with Bergen as, wait for it, a very realistic dream. It boils down to mental rape in a way. In the end, things have worked themselves out. Sort of. Jane is now captain of the ship, several of her team look like they might stay with her for the next journey, and Bergen is just as determined to make a relationship work with her.

It was a good book. I think the things that bothered me were simply because this reminded me of another book where the captain has to "link" with the ship in order for it to work. That book however didn't use language or sex to move the plot along--and I loved that.

I give Fluency a 3.75 and an R rating for use of the F word and some the one scene.

1-5 scale and what it means:
1: I couldn’t even finish it / just plain bad
2: I hope I didn’t pay for this / disappointing
3: I didn’t hate it, but it was still missing something / forgettable but inoffensive
3.5: On the line between good and ok / like, not love
4: Solid mind candy / worth reading
4.5: So very close to perfection! / must read
5: I could not put it down and I’m still thinking about it! / a true treasure

Movie Ratings in relation to my review:
Clean--Hallmark movies, some kissing, no nudity, no sex on or off "screen"
PG--Some innuendo but nothing kids don't hear every day, sex is all closed door
PG-13--some language (swear words not related to sex), more talk about sex, heavy petting, removal of clothing on screen, but sex is closed door.
R--swearing (F bomb), on “screen” sex, sometimes feels like the whole story is about the sex and not the relationship or some other plot, but not always

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Space, the Final Frontier: This is the voyage of the Star Ship Speroancora!

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

Space, the Final Frontier: This is the voyage of the Star Ship Speroancora!
Wow, Fluency (Volume 1 of the Confluence Series) what a terrific read by Jennifer Foehner Wells! I’m not a big reader of the Sci Fi genre but while perusing Amazon for my next couple of reads I luckily hit on Jennifer’s amazing novel. From the opening review line, “NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960s,” I was hooked: And Ms Wells did not let me down! A combination of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, Fluency whetted my Sci Fi appetite and sated me with a wonderful journey into the possibilities of tomorrow.
Dr. Jane Holloway is a linguist recruited by Nasa to travel to what appears to be an abandoned alien Space Craft. Trouble is when the NASA crew arrives at the behemoth ship and dock, they realize the space craft is not abandoned although the crew is gone. Soon, Dr. Holloway makes intellectual contact with the ship’s Navigator, a being of massive intellect, who is all that is left of the original alien crew. From there the story deliciously takes off in a well written space suspense thriller that will kept the reader well entertained and intelligently engaged.
Character development was superb, complex and masterfully done. Ms. Wells weaves alien and human mind interaction in a beautifully poignant story of hope, fear and eventual acceptance.
No gratuitous violence, language or sex: But just enough of each to keep the story real and moving at a perfect clip.
Hearty recommend. I’m hooked and have already ordered Remanence (Volume 2 of the Confluence Series). This Sci Fi novel is no shoot-‘em-up bang-bang space western, but rather a well written, thoughtful, “what if” space mystery along the lines of astronaut Sally Ride Meets HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey. And like Star Trek, when the adventurous Dr. Holloway is queried as to why she decides to stay on the star ship humanly alone she simply said (to paraphrase the iconic Star Trek “To boldly go where no one has gone before”), “Who knows where it will take me?”
Well Done Ms. Foehner Wells, Well Done.

36 people found this helpful

Helpful

Sandra Knapp

A great Sci-Fi story!!

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is the first book of a series, I believe a trilogy, and it was a complete story that stands alone just fine, but it does pique your interest to continue if you so wish.

I loved it!!! A small crew of scientists are sent from Nasa into space to dock with a ship they have discovered that seems stuck on an asteroid, or something like that. They choose a woman who has a unique talent with languages to be part of this very small crew, hoping she will quickly find a way to communicate with whoever might be manning this strange ship in space. Little did they know, but they could not have chosen a better candidate, and what happens next is more her story than anything else, but what a story it was!

There is so much going on, action, intrigue, "space monsters" and all manner of wonderful things to enjoy in the telling of this tale. I could hardly stand to put it down to get a good night's sleep.

If you like a good sci-fi outer space adventure, you will love this book! I highly recommend it!

23 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

eppingstrider

Excellent story - world-building, complexity, aliens...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

There are lots of really, really good things about this book: the world-building, the complexity, the plot, the aliens… The ingenuity of the alien ship and the way the lifeform aboard messes with her head (and therefore ours) makes for exciting reading.

There are also some things I liked less, like the somewhat wayward depiction of the group of astronauts selected for the mission. I couldn’t decide whether to call them stereotypes or just ‘would NASA really not weed these people out?’ But then, with the sort of people appointed to positions of power these days, and the possibility that NASA actually wants to the mission to fail, well, I suppose you can just about get away with them. They do make for a lot of inter-personnel (deliberate) tension, and they certainly have very different objectives from each other. Jane, being a civilian, is allowed to have different objectives, of course.

The basis of the communication between the alien and Jane is a form of telepathy. That leads to some interesting scenes, where eventually you wonder what is real and what is not. There are some very icky mammoth man-corroding slugs which appear to be real. As I said, the world building (and the alien science & technology) is very well done. Some reviews have hammered the writing, but I didn’t notice anything too clichéd (apart from the whole set-up).

Fluency is an excellent story, with some ingenious twists on the ‘what really happened at Roswell’ theme. In the end it leads to a series. I’m not sure I’m sufficiently sold on Jane’s adventure to continue it, but I do recommend the books to others who wonder what those little green men might turn out to be.

One person found this helpful

ER Harding

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

I’m working through a huge TBR pile, and have only one rule: never, ever read during the day. I have a life, dogs, a family, and work that’ll be horribly neglected, as well as books of my own to write. Evenings are for reading. ‘Fluency’ however, messed up my nice, tidy rule. I read it from cover to cover without the normal intervention of housework.

It’s an extraordinarily gripping tale about a woman, Jane, whose language and interpretation skills and previously outstanding professional history cause her to be chosen as joint lead in an expedition to investigate an apparently deserted alien spaceship.

How she deals with the challenges and the internecine conflicts within her own team, her own burgeoning romance and the wonderfully detailed world of the alien ship is nothing short of superb.

I can’t afford it, and I have a million other books to read first but, dammit, I’m getting ‘Remanence’ right now.

RJN

Loved it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

I downloaded Fluency as a freebie after reading a few pages to get a taste of the prose, okay, so I’m fussy, but I get bored easily if a book does not engage me and the writing is aimed at adolescents. I found myself totally engrossed and enjoying the ride. As mentioned by some other reviewers, some of the characters could be a bit more fleshed out, but this didn’t really detract from a great storyline. I sometimes have difficulty imagining people and other descriptions of the ship etc, but not with Fluency. I’ve already ‘purchased’ the next in the series and imagine myself devouring Jennifer Foehner Wells’ other literary servings devotedly.

Alan Marron

A decent read... but

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is an about average sci-fi read, but not much more than that. The characters are well drawn. The action and twists are enough to keep the reader page turning, although some of the twists are well foreshadowed. I enjoyed the book overall, but have no interest in reading other books in the series. Not the worst I've read recently, but far from the best.

One person found this helpful

Mark Cooper

Thoroughly enjoyable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

I grabbed this for free, in a promotion - and enjoyed it so much that I bought the second book as soon as finishing this one :)
It's exciting and fast-paced, and laced with more than a little humour. Thank you for writing this, Jennifer!

3 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Fluency Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Read & Listen

Free with Audible Trial $0.00

Buy with 1-Click $21.99

People who viewed this also viewed

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with Audible Trial

$0.00

Buy with 1-Click

$21.99