  We present evidence of a direct, continuous quantum phase transition between
a Bose superfluid and the $\nu=1/2$ fractional Chern insulator in a microscopic
lattice model. In the process, we develop a detailed field theoretic
description of this transition in terms of the low energy vortex dynamics. The
theory explicitly accounts for the structure of lattice symmetries and predicts
a Landau forbidden transition that is protected by inversion. That the
transition is continuous enables the quasi-adiabatic preparation of the
fractional Chern insulator in non-equilibrium, quantum optical systems.
