His particular brand of character-driven science fiction drives all the right themes home for me, with a tinge of realistic world-building. I could never get through H. P. Lovecraft, because his characters are almost literally cardboard cut-outs. It can't hold my interest. Watts, however, makes his characters three-dimensional, and they echo his themes.
The first novel of his I read, Blindsight, was an original take on first contact and an exploration of consciousness - concluding that consciousness is most likely worse than useless from an adaptive standpoint, and us humans are oddballs indeed for possessing something like it. It's essentially a philosophical treatise, but with a plot that manages to be non-trivial. The book is worth reading simply for his realistic treatment of vampires (yes, you heard right).
I'm now reading Starfish, which is the first of a trilogy, and I continue to be impressed. His daring is refreshing; the main characters are rapists, pedophiles and abuse victims, shoved into a cramped environment under 300 atm. of deep, dark seawater.
I also like Watts because he releases his works as free ebooks, which is fast becoming my preferred medium, not least because I have close to zero money and couldn't afford the dead tree versions anyway.
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