3.5 stars

Jake Bendel is a genius engineer, having manufactured environmentally friendly water plants, to provide clean drinking water to millions of California residents...ending the water drought forever.

He has made an enemy with a Jihad extremist, Viktor, who was thought to have died two years ago.

Men and plants in California start turning up sick and the government has evidence against Jake that he may have put in a waterborne virus in his water treatment plants.

This book was a sci-fi thriller book and I enjoyed learning more about bioterrorism. The virus spread had a tri-fold design. Only attacking males with a flu like virus AND it also had a harmful side effect that would change the males DNA and it would affect all off-spring with the lack of fear and anger in their DNA! It also, contained a virus specifically for plants that caused them to die. All this from the public’s water supply! Talk about scary.

I however thought the book was very convoluted bringing into play too many unexplained explosive twists.

All in all, I would recommend if you enjoy sci-fi thrillers, that could potentially teach you something in the world of biotech engineering. ( )

This is the second Jake Bendel book I have read. I have to admit that the first book, Civil Terror: Gridlock was good but I struggled with it a bit. Yet, there was enough good aspects of the book that I wanted to read the next book in this series. Thus, here I am.

There was something different this time about reading this book from the first one. I was really gelling with this book. In fact, I finished this book within a couple of days. The dynamics between Jake and Viktor keep things on high impact. A very dangerous game of cat and mouse.

Although, not required but you should read the first book to really understand the past history between Jake and Viktor. Viktor is a tormented psychopath hellbent on ruining Jake's life. I can't wait for book three. ( )

Waterborne by J. Luke Bennecke is a recommended action/thriller set in the near future and the second novel in the series featuring Jake Bendel.

Jake Bendel with a team of experts has invented a desalination system that will radically innovate the availability of clean, safe water for Californians. The system is powered by environmentally friendly molten salt reactors and once complete the project will consist of five plants running, making ocean water safe to drink. Water will never be a problem for California again. Jake and his team are behind schedule, but are working hard to get the whole system up and running.

In the back of Jake's mind is always the fact that Viktor, a vicious criminal featured in the first book, is still out there, wishing him harm. He is right to be concerned because Viktor does have nefarious plans and eliminating Jake is part of it. Simultaneously, someone has released an unknown virus into the water system, weaponizing the water, and Viktor is the prime suspect. Jake works with the FBI to uncover who is responsible and stop them before all of California is infected, while at the same time Jake needs to watch out for his own safety.

The premise of Waterborne is thought-provoking and the idea of someone weaponizing the water supply is always frightening, which makes it exciting escapism. The premise of the novel and the details require you to suspend disbelief, go with the flow of the action-movie plot, and avoid asking any questions about details. An attack by drone is one of the exciting chase scenes, although it was handled a bit too easily. There is information provided about the plot in the first novel, but I still felt as if I was missing some important details and information by starting with the second book. Also the writing felt off to me. It was as if in all the descriptions of people and places Bennecke tried a bit too hard to be trendy and cool. The character development is also light, but often this doesn't matter in a thriller where the action is the main event. This was previously published as Civil Terror: Waterborne; the first book is Civil Terror: Gridlock.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Black Rose Writing in exchange for my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/03/waterborne.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3918844258 ( )