Alicia Jones is a genius, and a little odd. At just twenty three years of age, she is close to finishing her doctoral dissertation. But when she tests her latest theory in the lab to generate a strong EM field, it has very unanticipated results. Results that lead to faster than light travel, and first contact with another race.
Her life just gets more complicated after that, when she finds out who she really is, and that the universe may not be as nice a place as she’d been told. Her determination to help keep Earth safe takes her to places more dangerous and strange than she’d ever envisioned.
I've been an avid book reader since I was a teenager in the 1980's. My preferred genre's are science fiction and fantasy.
I wrote some short stories and was encouraged to try writing and self publishing by some friends. I work in computers and writing is an obsessive hobby I have been trying to hone for a couple of years now. I'll let you judge if I have succeeded or not.
The brilliant mind of Alicia Jones moves faster than the missiles she invents. The action is fast and furious, sometimes too fast for the non genius that is reading it. Some of the tech talk completely baffles and tho I'm a trekkie, it can be a little much. I do however like the results of all that genius. I love Kristi as a counterpart for Alicia's serious demeanor and the battle scenes were great, with just enough detail to follow the different ships and directions. This is a good start to the series, gonna read the next one now! Let's kick some alien butt!!! Oh wait Alicia is the alien......... OK let's find some allies and kick everyone else's butt!!! Plan and done.! ;-)
I personally really enjoy the author so I gave this a read when I would have bypassed it otherwise as not my cup o' tea. I'm glad I didn't though, I really enjoyed this first book and am looking forward to see where it goes.
There are a few words in it that did stand out as being homonyms though and repeated throughout the book. That's the only reason not to give it 5 stars overall. The story itself was very engaging.
Good space opera with a strong female lead, but short
I found this book to be quite enjoyable if somewhat predictable. The young female lead has the typical space opera trope of being "super" but she was still quite easy to like. There are multiple editing errors: wrong two/too/to and were vs. we're, and such mostly. There were enough to be noticeable but not so many that I found it overly annoying. A good line editor would be a help.
Enjoyed the premise and it didn't get too over loaded with tech jargon! Loved the occasional references to favorite scifi shows. All in all a good enjoyable read, will definitely read the next one.
The only real problems are few. There are too many typos, for which I gave it only 4 stars instead of the 5 I world have given if it had been cleaned up a bit more. BUT the book is WELL worth the read! I DO recommend it!
Someone else wrote "Overly Simplistic" and that was being very generous. Somewhere in the book's Online Description it needs to state that it was written for Teens, or Pre-Teens...
I have a pretty high tolerance for ridiculousness. I love reading sci-fi and I don’t need it to be technical or realistic. I love far fetched stories. But this book challenged me in how much ridiculousness I could handle. Even though she is obviously meant to be extremely intelligent, as an astrophysicist who is still studying in school, the things she does are beyond impossible. First, the FMC stumbles across how to make FTL travel. In the matter of hours, she has built a probe to explore space. It takes her a few hours to design a spacecraft able to carry humans as well as designing new weapons to put on it. A few days to build it. She goes into space a few days later and meets aliens and buys technology from them. And in the way home decides to design a few more ships and set up a factory on an asteroid. Not bad for a 3 hour flight. Seriously?!! It would take years of engineering to plan a spacecraft. She is not an engineer. It would take experts to design weapons and defense systems. Studying Astrophysics would not account for the things she is doing, in a crazy amount of time. She also instantly becomes a genius military strategists. Plus, she finds out she is an alien, meets the first alien of her kind, and it means nothing to her. Wouldn’t you be burning with questions? Wouldn’t you want to know about the planet your parents were from, their culture, their history etc? Nope, apparently not.
I continued reading despite my total annoyance at the plot, and eventually sort of enjoyed it. Didn’t like it but didn’t hate it. And despite my feelings about this book, now I am a bit curious about where the story will go.
“First Contact” is very much a YA read which treats science as if it were magic and any problem can be solved by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Scientist Alicia Jones is working on her thesis when she accidentally discover Faster Than Light travel. Within days she has a working prototype of an interstellar probe and sends it on its merry way. It, of course, is noticed by an outpost of the Knomen Empire, which sends an emissary to Earth to see if we are eligible for membership. Two things become clear almost immediately. Alicia is not human (she's Knomen, which didn't come as a surprise) and the Empire, while seemingly benign, is actually no friend to those it rules. Within weeks Alicia and her friend Kristi are churning out battleship, space shuttles, superior shields and missiles, all the while hiding most of their work from the Knomens. As is traditional in books of this ilk it all comes to a head with a gigantic space battle. The writing isn't very and the editing is non-existent - 'your' and 'you're' may sound the same but they have different meanings. However, I have a weakness for bad SF/Space Opera and that is what saved it from a single Star rating. 2 Stars.
I liked this book, but not loved it because of its many flaws. I know my 2 star notation may seems harsh, but it reflect on the dizziness of the story. A young female scientist make the discovery of the century.... and go to a party !
The background story is quite well thought but the political, societal and personal consequences are glossed over by the writer. It is a fun read, but with so much more potential for greatest that the i was just frustrated at the end of the book.
I've much more appreciated books like Vaz (by Laurence E Dahners) or Kinsella that approach the same theme with much more intelligence and well thoughtfulness, even if they are less of a fun read.
All in all, the Alicia Jones series is science fiction for dizzy people (I'm sorry if i'm a bit stereotypical here). It is fun to read, but does not require thought.
Alicia not any of the other people feel real. They're either one dimensional or over the top. The building of ships is done in s few days! The designing not even tested. A general let's a civilian tell him what to do... Everything comes to pass in days. The earthlings do not fit over the discovery of other life forms in the universe? Impossible, they do it over a pandemic!!!
This was a decent book.. And i mean that.. BOOK.. As in all of the installments come out to be ONE book. This author has a extremely bad habbit of taking ONE BOOK and chopping it up into multiple 100-200 pages partials.. And call it a series.
I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior. So i recommend not buying this book.. Get it free from amazon kindle unlimited...
Its not worth the 6 installments at 3$ a pop.. IE 18$ for a.. DIGITAL book.
I read up to the 6th book before I finally ran out. The story is fast pace and has a lot of scientific languages as far as space travel and technology is concerned. Romance is glossed over and hardly worth mentioning. I liked the FMC (Alicia Jones) quite a bit. The series kept my attention even though I sometimes struggled with the sci-fi jargon from book to book. Definitely entertaining. 3.5 🌟
Thoroughly enjoyable romp, but spoiled for me by the failure of the publisher to supply editing. Too many homophones- including to/too,and your/you’re at such frequency I gave up trying to report them. Finished in the same evening as I began it, which is evidence of the enjoyment.
An orphan stranded in a new world, grow up to love her new planet and its people, living according to their values. Why do I feel like I'm reading Superman comic?
I swear I’ve read this series multiple times and just realized that I had never left a review. The story is fresh and new. The characters are relatable and fun to read. And talk about world building, totally awesome! I recommend this book to all readers.
Very good mindless entertainment. A very pleasant surprise to enjoy a new author as much as I did. She has a way of writing characters one instantly cares about. I am looking forward to more!
This story of a gal who invents Earth’s first FTL drive, and finds out Earth must join the Empire or risk going back to the stone age again. Great Short Story
An excellent story that is in serious need of an editor. Lots of missing punctuation (mostly commas). Also, Alicia refers to her artificial intelligence (device?) as A.I. (as if it’s a name) or Al at random. She also references any other artificial intelligence as A.I., which can be confusing.
This was a pretty good start to what looks like will be a very good space opera. There is as lot of information given in this book, but it is needed to build the world.