Partials (Partials Sequence # 1) by Dan Wells Review

Name: Partials (Partials Sequence # 1)

Author: Dan Wells

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Release Date: February 28th, 2012

Format: Hardcover

Buy the book on Amazon

480 pages

Summary:
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.
Dan Wells, acclaimed author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, takes readers on a pulsepounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question--one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival.

Goodreads

My Review:

What a really, really great book!!  In this dystopian novel, Kira carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, giving herself the responsibility of saving the future of the human race after she realizes that the government is too blindsided by power to make the necessary decisions.  Although there were a few nit-picky parts of the book that I did not love, I thought that the world and the characters Wells built were truly brilliant.

The book started off a little slowly, but quickly sped up, even making me feel as though it was a bit rushed by the end.  Kira and her group of very loyal friends (her boyfriend Marcus, her friend's brother Jayden, her friend's husband Haru, and her other friend Xochi) make several courageous decisions to leave their society several times in order to venture out into the wild to find the cure to the RM virus that is plaguing all humans.  This results in Kira and her friends moving back and forth from society in a fashion that was a little bit unbelievably fast.  However, their adventures both in society and most especially on the road were quite thrilling; at the end I was practically on the edge of my seat, both anxious to see what would happen next and worried for the safety of the characters to the point where I was afraid to read any more.

I also wished that the book had a bit more romance in it; there were definitely plenty of opportunities to add more.  Kira has been with her boyfriend Marcus ever since she was 13, but constantly rejects him when he proposes to her and seems to push him away in general.  She never tries to delve deeper into the reasons behind her feelings, but instead kind of ignores them.  That being said, Kira is intrigued by the Partial she captures named Samm, seeming to believe him when he's done nothing to earn her trust and to feel an attachment towards him that she cannot explain.  Marcus makes one quick note of jealously, but that is about as far as the romance goes in this book, and I am hoping to see more if it in the next one, especially after what happened to her and Marcus's relationship by the end of the book.

I was really impressed with the plot twist that was thrown in towards the end of the book.  It seemed very difficult to predict unless you were reading the book very closely and picked up on every little hint.  It threw me by surprise and I am very excited to see where Wells takes Kira's secret in the next book. Overall, I enjoyed Partials very much and would definitely recommend it to YA fans, and also to fans of Stephenie Meyer's The Host.

My Rating: