Twenty-five years ago, aliens visited Earth. They were remarkably human-looking and had learned to speak English before their visit. The Vardeshi spent a brief time meeting with diplomats outside the U.N. headquarters in New York and then left, with no more communication.

More than two decades later, Avery Alcott is a graduate student in California, and her linguistics professor plays her a recording of the Vardeshi language. He tells her he created a program to teach people the alien language, and he’s going to secretly allow her to use it to learn the very complex language. As it happens, a year later, the Vardeshi return, and an exchange program of sorts is set up between the aliens and residents of Earth. Avery, thanks to her knowledge of the language, not only gets a prime spot in the program, but she is invited to become a minor crew member on a spaceship traveling to the Vardeshi home planet.

Avery becomes the only human living and working among 10 aliens on a smallish spacecraft, with the expectation she will be in this position for a year. She is excited to have this incredible opportunity, and as much as she realizes ahead of time that she will no doubt experience culture shock and make mistakes of many kinds as she gets to know this new race, she still somehow doesn’t quite anticipate all that she will go through.

Ascending reads like a nonfiction account of a real woman’s experience going on an exchange program, immersing herself in a foreign culture that just so happens to be alien. It could very well seem a bit dry or slow to some readers, but I found it fascinating because the author makes it all seem so authentic. She fleshes out the Vardeshi culture and some of the language and approaches it with a scholar’s view. Throughout much of the book, there seems to be little conflict in the way one might expect from a space story except for the clashes of culture and personality that Avery, a human, faces in close quarters with aliens. But then it does lead to a stronger conflict and climax, with Avery then having to decide how she will proceed. Ascending is really a cool book but possibly more for cerebral readers who enjoy the concept, the world-building and well-crafted characters. It also has a sequel that’s just been published; I’ll be happy to read on to see where the story leads.

A thoroughly enjoyable read where Avery who is only the second human ever to have learnt the Vardeshi language finds herself launched across space on her way to a planet as humanities representative. I found her young and naive but this allowed the story to unfold that may not have occurred if say a more experienced military type person had been in her position. Overall an engaging read and am looking forward to reading the next instalment.

Ascending by Meg Pechenick is a great novel! super action packed and i found the setting super intresting

I thoroughly enjoyed "Ascending" by Meg Pechenick. While it had a slow start, this story of first-contact immersion with an alien race was a well written and enthralling read.

25 years after an alien race made contact - then left - the Earth, Avery, an ordinary woman with a linguistics degree, is tutored in their language in secret by her professor in the hopes of their eventual return. When they do, Avery's knowledge of their language earns her a position on their ship as a cultural emissary, representing the human race.

The immersion into an alien environment was excellently written, allowing the reader to learn the culture as the protagonist does. The conflict and tension in the story is a slow burn, starting with a niggling feeling of something being off before building to the climax of the story, and leaving the reader wanting to know more, to know *why*.

I'm looking forward to reading the sequels.

*I received a copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for a review*

I have to say, when I started reading this book, I was pretty skeptical. The book was a slow starter, and I had no connection to Avery besides knowing her linguist abilities.

The theme of not really knowing Avery, and character development as a whole being sort of sketchy, still continues through the book. However I ended up completely enthralled with the story and what was going to happen next. I simply couldn’t put the book down!

I gave this book 3 stars because I did genuinely enjoy this book after all, but the development of the characters and story could use some work.

I am eager to read the next book!

GoodReads review is at the following link:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2901809573?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

I love any books about Aliens and this story had me hooked from the very start, the story is slow parts but still get me hooked

Ascending is the first installment in debut author Margaret Pechenick's The Vardeshi Saga. In 1993, a race called the Vardeshi made 1st contact with Earth. After a meeting at the UN, they got up and left saying that Earth wasn't ready for what they could offer. They considered humankind to be too young, and too angry, and too fractured. Sound familiar? The arrival of the Vardeshi led to the formation of the United Earth Council to deal with any future entanglements with alien races. Even though Earth moved leaps and bounds in technology, the Vardeshi didn't return.

Flash forward 25 years where we find protagonist Avery Alcott is a graduate student at NYU's linguistic program. Her mentor, Dr. Sawyer, was one of those who was allowed to meet with the aliens. He also created a program called TrueFluent which was hugely successful. He has spent years trying to break down the Vardeshi language so that if, or when they return, he would be ready for them. Avery spends a year learning and breaking apart the Vardeshi language thanks to Dr. Sawyer's program.

Dr. Sawyer believed that Avery would be the ideal candidate for the exchange because she has humility, kindness, and patience to deal with any situation she finds herself in. Then the call comes in. The Vardeshi will allow a cultural exchange program for 100 earthlings to live among them for a year. Avery is one of those chosen. In fact, the Vardeshi crew of the Pinion chose Avery to travel to the Vardeshi home planet. To make matters even more interesting, Avery is also chosen to become a member of the crew and wear the same uniform they do.

Avery is given the title of novi, the lowest rank in the hierarchy of the Vardeshi Stellar Fleet. She finds that she has a friend in Zey Takheri who is also a novi and her superior. It's menial server role, but it gives Avery a change to better understand the people she is going to spent a year with. As Avery learns more about the crew of the Pinion, she finds that there's both curiosity about her, as well as resentment that someone thinks that they can really learn the Vardeshi language good enough to gain support for an Earth/Vardeshi alliance.

There is a feeling of something not quite right onboard this ship, and it's going to be a long trip if Avery can actually survive the machinations of people who have no desire to see an alliance with Earth. As others have said, the first part of this story is rather dull since nothing much happens. There is Avery's curiousness, as well as her reservation at not knowing enough to get by. However, it's a pretty good story overall, but with not a whole lot of action. Sure, there's a bit of suspense and mystery, but the ending is the real story.

The sequel, Bright Shards, is set to be released on August 1st of this year. I will definitely continue just to see where Avery goes from here after all that has happened to her.

4 strange stars

I can't believe how exciting this book got! As some readers have pointed out already, this story starts kinda slow but takes up pretty quickly, once Avery is on the Alien ship that's set for Vardesh Prime. The Worldbuilding was excellent. From the beginning, I suspected the author already possessed expertise in linguistics and anthropology. The Vardeshi seemed to be very well planned out and realistic. When I read the "About the Author" section, it turned out she did, in fact, have an academic background in those exact two fields.

The only thing that actually bothered me is the Romance part that suddenly emerged seemingly out of nowhere at the end of the book. In this case, I honestly believe that dramatic irony would have been a good tool to not take the reader by total and implausible surprise.

Overall, this was a fantastic read for people who prefer plausible science fiction scenarios to action-driven stories.

➺What's happening.
It has been 25 years since the Vardeshi had briefly visited and then left earth. And it changed the planet forever. Their short stay on earth left the people on earth wondering. They couldn't stop working with the little they had learned about them. Especially since the Vardeshi said they saw potential in that young race, but also a lot of things they didn't like. (Bruh, I can relate)

Avery's linguistic professor never stopped hoping the Vardeshi might return within his lifespan, but slowly comes to the conclusion, that he might have to hand down his legacy to the next generation. So he chooses Avery to work with the top-secret language programme he built. It is far more advanced than the governmental institution he is supposed to put it together for know. Avery immerses herself into the Vardeshi language and sooner than they all suspected, the Vardeshi are back. And this time, they want to work with the humans.

The Vardeshi propose an exchange programme, where 100 humans come to Vardeshi Prime with them and they leave people of theirs behind to learn from each other. As Avery gets into the exclusive programme of people who are being considered for the exchange, she learns more and more about this cool but wise alien race and can't help but wonder what it is the Vardeshi see on planet earth that they could possibly profit from. Their technology is so far advanced, their intellect so far above the humans, it seems almost laughable.

The Vardeshi ship Pinion takes off with her on board and it turns out, not everybody is so hell-bent on the exchange as it seemed at first.

Con:
-Alien, hostile environment
-hostile aliens meet helpless
-Avery is pretty much inferior because her body simply wasn't made to travel in space in a ship that is accommodating a body similar to hers, but yet so different

Pro:
- adorable new bff
- discovering an entire new species
- hawt alien with gorgeous hair

What could possibly go wrong, you wonder? Well, a good damn lot, as it turns out.

There was one really interesting conversation that stuck to me. I will simply but it in a blockquote down here and y'all can make up your mind about it on your own
"Most people are looking for something more. Not fireworks and rainbows, necessarily, but a partner who chooses you for who you are. Marriage is complicated enough as it is. It seems to me that to have the slightest chance of succeeding, it ought to begin with love."
"Not just with love. With passion. Infatuation."
"Yes" I said.
"And everyone expects this?"
"Im not sure 'expect' is the right word. But most of us hope for it."
She shook her head.
"You think we're crazy." I said lightly.
"Not crazy. But perhaps...you ask too much of the universe."
___________________
Writing Quality + ease of reading = 4*

pace = 3* (As I said, it started out suuuuper slow)

plot development = 4*

characters = 3,5* (I would have wished for a bit more input and "on-screen-time" for most of the other Vardeshi crew)

enjoyability = 4*

insightfulness = 3*
____________________
This eArc was given to me via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Pechenick has written a thought provoking book about alien assimilation. It offers a refreshingly new approach to humans first contact. I am looking forward to the sequel.

Loved this book so much. The subject matter was unique. I found myself excited to find out what happened next to the main character without being confused by her actions. It was hard to out the book down and was disappointed when it ended. Love the dips and curves along the way. I can't wait to read more.

The first book in the Vardeshi series surprised me. To be honest, I didn’t have high expectations for this book so to come across a fantastic Sci fi to add to my collection was great!

This book was well edited and well paced. Some parts were a little slower than others but it picked up in other sections. It’s not easy sci fi - it can be a little full on at times.

The Vardeshi are an alien race, much more sophisticated than the human race. They came to earth about 25 years ago, but after making contact with humans, they decided to leave again. The timing wasn’t right for first contact.
Avery and Dr. Sawyer, one of Avery's teachers and a linguist, designs a program to learn the Vardeshi language. Using this programme, he teaches Avery Vardeshi, so if they come back to earth, there will be two people who can communicate with them. Shortly after Avery masters the language, the Vardeshi do return, and an amazing story about inter species contact begins, with both races wanting to get to know each other better. Avery is offered the chance to go on a cultural exchange with the Vardeshi.

This was a really great story, with a captivating plot. Well worth a check out. I was impressed. Can’t wait to read to next in the series!

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

THE ACENDING by Meg Pechenick was an okay novel. I didn't fall in love with the characters. The plot was great, as well as the writing but for some reason did not empathize with the characters so my heart did not get into it.

A well-edited, well-written story of second contact, with an appealing, if bland, narrator/protagonist, but somewhat lacking for me in character development and worldbuilding.

I say second contact because it's set 25 years after a superior alien civilization comes to Earth, takes a good look, and decides to go away again. Shortly after the story starts, they decide to come back - a controversial decision, and subject to much debate within their own culture.

The book is narrated by a graduate student in linguistics who is the only person, apart from her elderly professor/mentor (involved in the first contact), who can speak their language, after a learning process that (with incredible convenience) ended about three weeks before the aliens unexpectedly and unpredictably returned. I'm prepared to reluctantly allow one convenient coincidence per plot, and happily there are no others. However, that's not the end of my issues with the book (which I nevertheless enjoyed overall).

One thing I've noticed about a lot of SF books being published at the moment is that the actual science is a bit dubious. I'm not talking about the genre conventions of artificial gravity and FTL travel; I mean mistakes like conducting radio communication "in real time" from "the edge of the Sol system" (wherever that is), and a pocket-sized oxygen dispenser that's good for a month (as a supplement, but still). For that matter, nine-sided dice; that isn't a number of faces that can be on a regular polyhedron.

That's one level of the issues I had. Another is that the aliens are just not that alien in a lot of ways, despite part of the point of the whole thing being that the protagonist is immersed in an alien culture. They have weeks and months, though the weeks appear to be eight days long (it's never really discussed). They'll kick a person under the table to tell them to shut up. The women wear dresses. For that matter, they're biologically very humanoid; blue blood, yes, but despite being descended from predators, they mostly eat vegetables, and their bodies are very much the same shape as humans'. They have one language (with some dialects) and effectively one culture, despite being a multiplanetary species. There's really not much about them that couldn't plausibly be part of a human culture.

They're stronger and faster than humans, with better eyesight and hearing, and are quicker to learn (everyone on the ship speaks fluent English, despite the fact that some are not at all fans of humanity). They're a largely nonviolent society. But they do have flaws. They're excessively obedient to authority, they apparently don't screen their spaceship crews very well at all, and their computer systems are hard to learn to use (which, as someone in the industry, I can tell you points to poor design).

Then, I didn't feel like the characters had a lot of depth, weight, or backstory. Not just the aliens, and the incidental humans we encounter early on, though certainly them; but Avery, the grad student narrator, herself. Even though we get the entire story through her, she never really had that much dimension for me.

She says things that make it clear that she's had boyfriends, but she doesn't talk about any of them specifically - anything she remembers about them, anything she's learned from her mistakes with them. She has parents, but they're lightly sketched in. She mentions a best friend, but unless this is the person she met briefly during training, this best friend isn't ever named and there are no reminiscences about her either. Her roommates are just a couple of names with no qualities attached. It's as if she comes into existence at the beginning of the book, with the most bland and generic background to go with her bland, generic identity as a basic middle-class white girl. She's a good student, but not outstanding; she manages to be, at one and the same time, the obvious candidate to be the first human sent to live among the aliens, and completely average and undistinguished.

Her mentor considers her to have personal qualities of humility, kindness, and patience, which is why he selects her to learn the alien language and be the potential representative of humanity, and while she doesn't show herself to not have those qualities, she didn't, for me, particularly show herself to have them to an unusual degree either.

Despite all of these reservations, I did enjoy the book, and wanted Avery to succeed. I just wish that everything had been a little richer and better developed.

The Vardeshi are an alien race, far more sophisticated than the human race, who came to earth about 25 years ago, but after the first contact with humans, they decided the time wasn't right and left again. Dr. Sawyer, one of Avery's teachers and a linguist, designs a program to learn Vardeshi, based on the fragments of Vardeshi spoken the first time they came to earth. With the help of his own experience and the program he teaches Avery Vardeshi, so if they would return to earth, there would be two people who speak their language. Shortly after Avery masters the language, the Vardeshi do return, and a captivating story about human - Vardeshi contact begins, with both races wanting to get to know each other better. Avery, being the only person on earth speaking Vardeshi (except for Dr. Sawyer) is being offered the chance to join the crew on a Vardeshi ship to travel to their homeworld in order of a cultural exchange.

First of all, I want to say that I really enjoyed this story. It was very well written, a fascinating storyline about getting to know an alien race, and the author manages to write about the characters in a way that makes you think you know them as well as the main character does, which I really liked. The story keeps surprising you, there is never a dull moment where you think, okay, this was something I saw coming from way ahead.
Sometimes something would happen completely out of the blue, and I was like, whoa, where did that come from, because it seemed a little bit random. This is one of the only things that I liked a little less about the story, together with the fact that the Vardeshi return 3 weeks after Avery learnt their languages, it's hard to believe this timing after 25 years of radio silence.
Like mentioned before, most of the time when something happened, I didn't see it coming, but in a good way, because it fitted perfectly into the story. It makes the story very captivating, it will never bore you.
It is also very nice to see how Avery gets to know the Vardeshi, and how the crew gets to know her. Even with all the differences, the characters begin building friendships you know will last. It was also kinda funny when you see how the Vardeshi react on some things that are so normal for us, humans, but unbelievable and weird for them,

So even though they may be way ahead of us, I think both humans and Vardeshi can learn a lot about each other, and I can't wait for Bright Shards to come out to see how the story continues.

A very human tale of first contact. A recommended purchase for sci-fi collections. HS crossover appeal, although some readers may struggle with the slow burn opening

Cannot believe how crazy good this book is. An awesome blend of social issues and science fiction. Cannot wait for more in the series. Will recommend to adults and teens.

This gave me so much of what I love: first contact, minimal action, a slow burn beginning, the feeling of immersion & young (believable) characters.

I really enjoyed this story. The main character is young, but the story telling is mature and well written. The events that happen are plausible. This is not so much of a science fiction as a character story. The aliens are so similar to humans, it could have just been placed on Earth somewhere in a foreign culture. Comparisons are made to going to China to learn Mandarin immersion style. There is a big focus on language, and the difficulties learning and sense of accomplishment one can experience when things begin to click. There is a romance, or at least an attraction, possibly one sided, but that's not a big part of the story. I would have liked that to be woven in a bit more thoroughly, instead of suddenly announced the way it was. The romance is taboo, but it's not clear that it needs to be. There was a pretty well explored side story about someone who is different, slightly handicapped even, and how lonely and defeating that can be. I would be interested to see what happens next with these people, human and alien!

Great book! The first part of the book is slow and tedious, but necessary to get the background to understand the rest of the book. The story takes off once the main character starts her voyage and that part of the book is great. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series which, I think, comes out in June of this year.
My first experience with this author but will make sure to check any new books she writes.

If you prefer/don’t mind a hard sci-fi with minimal action scenes, this would fit the bill. It’s a drawn-out, first contact story that provides the reader a mimetic experience of learning to live with an alien race. The first quarter of the novel passes without even seeing an alien, but this restraint is a strength of the novel. We learn about the Vardeshi as Avery does.

Avery is a likeable character who makes reasonable choices. She was an interesting heroine because she’s rather bland; her normality serves to make her relatable. A brash, argumentative protagonist would have altered the course of the story, likely weakening the exploratory tone.

You’re forced to suspend your disbelief that the Vardeshi would be so human – there is no explanation regarding convergent evolution or shared DNA that explains this similarity. But, it didn’t take away from the story and likely would be less jarring to those who don’t read a lot of science fiction. It is possible aliens could look similar to us, so I let it go as luck on our part.

Aside from the last 20%, there is not a lot of tension in the novel and the plot played out almost exactly as I expected it to, minor details aside (this did not lower my enjoyment though – there weren’t a lot of ways for it to go once it started). I found the very restrained romance intriguing. But it was obvious from the first interview that Avery had an attraction, so why it was a revelation to her confused me. I had hoped for bit more intrigue in that regard once it was introduced (cross-species illicit affairs are a favorite trope of mine).

Overall, it was a very enjoyable read that I couldn’t put down. The depth into the Vardeshi culture was well-developed and the story moved at an easy pace. You felt Avery’s disappointments and rallied for her successes. I look forward to the sequel.