Bitter Waters: 6

by Wen Spencer

Book Overview

From Wen Spencer, finalist for the John W. Campbell Award...In this brand-new adventure in the multiple award-winning series, half-human, half-alien tracker Ukiah Oregon must put his skills to the ultimate test-because kidnappers have taken his son.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451459229
• ISBN13: 9780451459220
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Roc
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

A good SF mystery

This was the first book by this author that I had read, and although I read it out of order for the series and was rather confused, I still enjoyed it immensely. One of the advertising blurbs said "Don't plan on getting anything else done if you start a Wen Spencer novel; they are exceedingly hard to put down!" So true. I read it in one day and then went scrambling to get the other three in the series. My only regret is that now I have read them all and wish there were more. Definitely a keeper. Alien invaders, kidnapped babies, government agents, plenty of action and mystery.

Gotta Get It!

BITTER WATERS by Wen Spencer manages to pull off the difficult task of being a series novel that stands on its own. I came across BITTER WATERS by accident and fell in love with it--enough so that I special ordered the first two Ukiah Oregon books to read them all in order.Briefly, Ukiah and his private invesitgator partner, Max Bennett are just back from Oregon (Minutes out of the airport back) when the police call them in on a missing child case. Ukiah, an alien hybred, manages to locate the missing child only to find that other children have turned up missing--and his enemy, the very alien Ontongard, seems to be involved. Then his son/clone Kittaning is kidnapped, a Homeland Security agent turns up investigating a cybercult and everything gets skewed sideways.It is a difficult feat to write mystery/suspense stories in a science fiction setting but Wen Spencer pulls it off, in large part because her story is deeply rooted in our own familiar world and set only months into the future. Add to that well written characters and you have great story telling.THough I read BITTER WATERS first, I do reccomend that you read all three Ukiah Oregon books in order so you get his full story in proper detail. Each book stands alone, but together they form a compelling story. I'm looking forward to the next one.

The best of the series... so far

I just finished and... WOW, it deserves more than 5 stars! Wen Spencer has officially made my list of automatic "must-have for the keeper-shelf" authors. She weaves complex characters and intricate plot details to create a world that is at once wildly fantastic and utterly realistic. This series has it all: good and evil, love and hate, individuality and hive minds, mysteries and clues, death and immortality, decency and depravity. Did I mention aliens, bikers, the FBI, way-cool tech toys, big guns, cool cars, Kevlar and a quest to save the human race? You simply MUST read this book - but read Alien Taste and Tainted Trail first. There are enough back-story explanations in Bitter Waters, that it could probably pass on it's own, but you'll enjoy it more if you've read the first two books.

Wen just keeps on getting better and better!

Wen Spencer's writing grows with each book. I got home yesterday after 8 days away to find my copy of Bitter Waters waiting for me. Finished it at 7 AM this morning. (Yawn!)It is absolutely amazing to see how well her writing improved from Alien Taste (pretty darn good) to Tainted Trail (yep, not a one book wonder) to Bitter Waters. This is a mature writer working here! And she's still eligible for the John W. Campbell Award in 2003 for Best New Writer!!! She ought to win hands-down.The ability Wen have manifested to climb into the heads of some very strange people (like Rennie, or even _Hex_) is terrific. Few SF writers write believable aliens, fewer still write believable human interactions with aliens from the alien point of view.Bravo!Buy this book. Better yet, buy Alien Taste and Tainted Trail and lose a weekend reading them all in sequence....

exciting science fiction thriller

Although the human race is unaware of it, there is a war going on between two rival groups of an alien race. The Ontongard infects humans and makes the species one of them, an individual cell in an organism. The pack aliens retain their individual identities while having access to the group memory. The pack wants to kill the Ontongard so they won't destroy the human race. Ukiah Oregon, half alien and half human is the only breeder on the planet and the Ontongard want him to create more of their kind.Oregon has a son who has been kidnapped. Ukiah, his friend Max, and the pack are doing all in their power to get him back but since the people who kidnapped him are human, they have to be very careful not to let any government official know about Kitt's alien origins. To make matters even worse, the kidnappers are using Ontongard biological weapons, which means that people who don't have any understanding of what they are doing are playing with something that could destroy the world.Wen Spencer has written an exciting science fiction thriller that stars a vulnerable and powerful hero who is impossible not to cherish. The war between the two alien factions feels real and believable in a Twilight Zone kind of way. The investigation of the kidnapping by aliens, Homeland Security, the FBI, the local Pittsburgh police and a human once possessed by the Ontongard is exciting to see unfold as each group has its own agenda. BITTER WATERS is a must read.Harriet Klausner