Partials – Dan Wells

Partials
By Dan Wells
Partials – Book One
Available 28 February 2012

Description:
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.

This Blonde’s Review:
The Partials aren’t humans, they were engineered to be like super humans to fight in wars. They were faster, stronger, and better in every way. When the wars people fought were over, soon they found themselves in a war with the Partials. During this war a manufactured virus was released that destroyed the human population, so few people were immune to this virus that they are all able to fit on Long Island. No baby has been born immune to the virus and they all die within days, leading to laws requiring all girls to become pregnant once they hit a certain age. An age that is being lowered as more time passes without living children.

Kira is a medic in training, a girl who is torn apart each time she sees a baby die while only being able to take down the baby’s stats for the researchers to look through. When she discovers someone she loves is pregnant she knows she has to do whatever it takes to keep that baby alive. Kira has ideas that people in leadership positions are quick to dismiss. She believes that researching dying babies won’t help, that they need to do research on a Partial.

Her love for her friends and her hope for the future lead Kira and her friends to plan how to capture a Partial on their own. Luckily her friends are intelligent people and have connections in different areas, including military and political. Things don’t go as smoothly as hoped but they do manage to capture a Partial. Surprisingly Kira is put in charge of the research on the Partial instead of more experienced researchers. As she conducts her research Kira encounters more questions than answers; about RM, about Partials, and about the their leaders.

The relationships in this story weren’t as solid and connected as I would have hoped for but Kira and a few other characters managed to keep me interested in their story. Kira is supposed to have a boyfriend, but the author is quick to show Kira’s uncertainty and just as quick for him to fail her. I had little interest in that romantic relationship and would have been happy to have left it out entirely. This is not a book to be read for romance, instead it is a book to be read for the story.

This story has a lot more science in it than I expected, but Dan Wells has managed to write it in such a way that as Kira figures it out or learns it we are able to learn and understand it. I found it fascinating and was continually hoping for more information about what was happening with the virus.

The relationships may have been too shallow for some readers, but I enjoyed this one and can’t wait for the next book. I loved the way the author built this story up with many things not being what they seemed. I was drawn in by the things I was learning, even if it was all fictional. The way the story ended was less than satisfactory for me in some ways, but it wasn’t bad enough to leave me unhappy with the story. Instead it has me impatient to read the next book in the story to find out what happens next.

Partials is a book about a girl, a virus, engineered beings, and political unrest. It’s the story of how a teenage girl who grew up in a world of orphans sets out to save the future of mankind. If the description sounds interesting to you then this is one you should pick up as soon as it comes out. I know I’m ready to read the rest of Kira’s story, but until then I’ll be looking into other books by Dan Wells.

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