Customer Reviews

Bitter Waters (Ukiah Oregon, Book 3)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

...

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.

In this third book in the series, Ukiah Oregon is still reeling from his discovery about his alien origins and from his son's creation, and he finds himself put to the test when he becomes involved in searching for some missing children. His reputation as the Wolf Boy continues to make his life and his detective partner Max's life a challenge, and a government agent is suspicious about their connection to a strange cult. Luckily Ukiah's lesbian caretakers also take care of his son, so he can focus on his job. Before Ukiah can investigate this connection himself, his son is abducted and his hunting powers are put to the test. Joined by his girlfriend Indigo and his Pack brothers, Ukiah and Max try to elude the mysterious government agent and find Ukiah's son before it's too late. Although it's rather heavy with plot elements, "Bitter Waters" is a captivating thriller with a variegated cast and starring one of the more intriguing characters in fiction.

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.

I've read all four of the Ukiah Oregon books, and have to disagree with the reviewer below that described plot inconsistencies. The order of the books are: Alien Taste, Tainted Trail, Bitter Waters, and Dog Warrior. The action of each one flows naturally to the next with no obvious inconsistencies. Ukiah's son enters the scene in the first book, Alien Taste. Almost all the action in the second book, Tainted Trail, takes place in or around Pendleton Oregon -- so naturally it's mentioned in the third book. There is only one character Ukiah interacts with in Bitter Waters that could have been deceased in Tainted Trail, and that character was in fact alive and well by the end of Tainted Trail. Finally, the "cult" mentioned in Bitter Waters is completely new to the action (and continues into Dog Warrior). The reviewer may have gotten them confused with the Ontongard in Tainted Trail, which are a completely different problem, persistent through all the books.

I agree with the reviewer that the books are great and well worth reading, just didn't want readers to believe those plot problems the reviewer mentioned really existed.

This is the third in a series of books featuring 'Ukiah Oregon,' a 'wolf-boy' who was found running feral with wolves by a pair of lesbians, who, after hiring a private eye to try and locate his family - and failing to do so - raised him as their own. This wolf-boy, Ukiah, is an interesting character in and of himself, but things get complicated fast in his world.

In the first book, 'Alien Taste,' and the second, 'Tainted Trail,' we learn that Ukiah is in fact an alien hybrid of strange DNA, and for all intents and purposes, cannot die (though parts of him that are cut, bled, or broken off tend to change into animal shapes and try to re-merge with him later when he wakes up. Ew.)

Now a full partner with the PI who first tried to find him, Ukiah is asked to help on a missing children case, and hasn't made much headway when his own 'child' (actually a portion of himself that managed to form a human baby on its own) is stolen. The stakes rise, cultists appear - but could the hive-mind-mentality Ontonguard be involved as well?

Well crafted, fun stuff, and light enough reading to be enjoyable on the bus. Thumbs up, in a mind-candy way.

'Nathan

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.

Spencer just gets better and better - This one is great! The mystery is deeper and tangled; the old favorite characters from the first two books come back, but we get to see new depths (to the Pack, to Max, to Max's gun bunny girlfriend, even to Ukiah). I really recommend this book!

and you can tell the author knows the Pittsburgh area! love the description of Bigelow Blvd and I-279 intersection!

Bitter Waters, the third in the Ukiah Oregon series and sets up the story for the forth one. These books are better if read in order,otherwise you will end up confused. This is a good series, I liked every one of them and wish the author would write more of them. The relationships between the charactors is why I enjoyed this series as much as I did. Along with Hex there are knew protagonists in this book. I can't go into the story line w/o spoilers, so I will just tell you that the books are worth reading, and I liked them enough that I will get any other books that the author writes.