Partials (Partials #1) by Dan Wells

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The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the population. Reduced to 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 threaten to launch what’s left of humanity into 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 discover 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.

Review.

Partials by Dan Wells

My rating: 2 of 5 stars








I'm a HUGE fan of dystopian novels so when I got an arc of Partials I was really looking forward to reading it.

Kira's our 16 year old protagonist who has just completed her medical internship and is working with others on finding a cure for RM, a disease that kills infants/babies within a short time after they're born. So basically, world population has gone down the drain.
The origin of this disease is the Partials - human look-alike super robots that were created to fight a war for humans but instead turned against them. Kind of like The Terminator & iRobot.

The Good
I guess the plot wasn't bad. In fact, Dan Wells has thought this out and done his research pretty well. If you like a bit of sci-fi mixed with your dystopia, Partials a pretty cool read. The book picked up its pace and got pretty good nearing the end.

The Bad
The characters fell flat for me. At first I thought that it was probably because the story was just starting but 30% into it, I still couldn't connect with any of the characters. There were a lot of times when I found Kira pretty annoying, at least, till the end. Also her boyfriend Marcus? NO CHEMISTRY!

The writing bothered me a little bit. I'm not sure what about it specifically got to me, can't place my finger on it but through out the novel a huge part of me was disinterested. Although this could probably also be because of what I mentioned above (the characters). The story doesn't start slow, but it FELT slow (if that makes any sense). There were a lot of things happening at the same time but I just couldn't get into the book.

I found myself just skimming through some of the pages because I didn't care about Kira or anyone else's feelings/thoughts. That's a big no for me. I can't get into a book unless I like at least one of the characters. Even dialogues between the characters sometimes just felt a little unrealistic and silly to me. Again, I'm not sure if it's the characters or the writing couldn't keep my interest.

Final Thoughts

Partials had a promising plot and like I said, I was really looking forward to reading this one but it was kind of a let-down. At least, it was for me. But if you're the kind of reader who does not need to be emotionally invested in the characters to like a book, check this out, it just might be for you!

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