Alien Taste by Wen Spencer

Finished another book recently, actually Thursday or Friday. I simply have not had time to just sit and relax and tell you about it until now. Since Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest as well as preparation there isn't any better time than the present.



The book recently finished was Alien Taste by Wen Spencer. Although I am half convinced I have read another Wen Spencer novel, this one really made me sit up and take notice. I found myself wanting to read this book and scheduled time in my day to get a few pages in if nothing else. Since I am becoming one of those "busy women" most of us are, scheduling my reading has helped me relax through the day when there were moments to do so (along with my knitting of course, can't forget the knitting!)

Alien Taste is about Ukiah Oregon. No, not the place, the man. He is a tracker who helps his partner in a private detective agency find lost people. He is good at it because not only can he pick up a trail where most people don't even see one, he can mysteriously know parts of their DNA, something only his partner knows. How does he do it? Because he isn't fully human. How he is not fully human is one of the big parts of this story and it has nothing to do with the normal areas of science fiction you would expect.

It appears Ukiah is the result of a cross-breeding of human and alien. His alien father was fighting a horrible war with his race because he did not believe in their way of "colonizing" worlds. They took over everything from DNA up. When the surface of the planet was completely populated with their kind they moved on to another planet and so on. But Prime, Ukiah's father, believed this was wrong and died try to stop it over three hundred years ago. Yeah, Ukiah is old, but to his own memory he is probably about 21 or 23 because when he was found in Ukiah, Oregon he was about 12 years old and caught in a bear trap eating the intestines of a rabbit because he had been raised by wolves.

Thus enters one of his moms into the story. He has two mothers, Mom Jo and Mom Laura. This is one of the better descriptions of an alternate family story line that I have seen or read for a while. It is caring and not the main story. It is just part of how Ukiah finished growing up.

Of course there is a love interest in the story -- Indigo. Although she isn't the main focus of the story, she is an integral one as an intrepid FBI agent who falls for Ukiah and whom Ukiah loves with a passion that made me keep reading, not only for its sincerity, but because of its beauty.

As you would guess, there are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are the Pack and the bad guys are the Ontongard. To get all of the twists and turns of how they work and don't work you just simply have to read the story.

Through it all Ukiah is trying to figure out who he is, and when he does, he has to learn how to tell the woman he loves as well as his two moms, as well as his partner that, well, is really like a father to him. Their reactions to who he is is also another major part to read this book.

All in all, Alien Taste was one of the more uplifting books I have read in a while complete with twists and turns you can't really expect, guess, or figure out ahead of time. No, it isn't an impossible read in this area, but it does flow perfectly from point A to point B without falling over itself. If you need a good, uplifting and encouraging story as well as one heck of an adventure, I highly recommend it.