Title: Partials (Partials Sequence #1)
Author: Dan Wells
Pages: 470 (Paperback)
Rating 4.5/5
I kept bouncing between a full five star rating and a four while I was updating my status on Goodreads. I finally settled on a four (why can’t there be half stars????) even though I truly enjoyed Partials tremendously! Read on to know why…
The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials–engineered organic beings identical to humans–has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out.
Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic-in-training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws have pushed what’s left of humanity to the brink of civil war, and she’s not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will find that the survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them–connections that humanity has forgotten, or perhaps never even knew were there.
It took me a bit to get into the story, not because it didn’t invite me in warmly enough but for the slow start. Things happened, the action was well displayed but it was often cut up by dialogue either by Kira internally or eternally, or by those around her with a nod to Haru. Haru is a character that drove me crazy, he’s passionate and always seemed to have an argument ready on his lips. At first I thought I might like him but that idea quickly shattered. Though the dialogue sometimes slowed down everything, it was interesting to read and I never felt the need to skim ahead. Wells did a great job in creating RM so that all readers, especially those less inclined for sci-fi, to understand the virus attacking humans.
The story line seemed pretty linear at first glance and as a reader I thought I could guess what Kira’s road to reaching her goals was but Dan Wells did a great job of changing it up, especially in the final scenes. The ending was no surprise but it was a satisfying ride getting there.
Kira was a good protagonist but seemed to lack that interesting sparkle for the most part. One character that caught my interest was Samm. While most of the characters seemed to jump from one loyalty to the next, Samm was say, interesting, to see interactions with. I’m pretty excited to see where the story is going and from what I’ve seen, this author has what it takes to bring the characters and plot to a whole new level in the next book, Fragments.
The book reminds me of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series and the protagonist, Kira Walker, at times reminded me of Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games trilogy. The technological elements and world-building are fascinating and Kira comes to be seen as an important person, even a symbol, within her community even as she learns secrets about her own self. Partials is a unique story within a scarily real future where humanity is on the verge of collapse. My problems with it are very minor, even picky so I’m going to tell you to read it and rate it on your own:)
Happy Thursday!
~Tally
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Hmms I need to check this one out!