Partials
Ratings34
Average rating4
15
Ratings34
Average rating4
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 pulse-pounding 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.
This description comes from the publisher.
Featured Series
3 primary books4 released booksPartials Sequence is a 4-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2012 with contributions by Dan Wells.
Reviews with the most likes.
DNF. I'll come back to this book eventually, but right now it's not holding my interest.
Pros: realistic societal tensions in a post-apocalyptic world, compelling quests, strong female protagonist
Cons: don't learn as much about the partials as you'd like, the protagonists get out of several tough situations with surprising ease
For Parents: no sex, no swearing, lots of violence, but nothing too graphic (shooting/death, off stage torture)
It's been 11 years since the genetically engineered partials rose up against their human creators, unleashing a virus that decimated the human population. Now, the remaining survivors live on Long Island, most in the community of East Meadow, which, due to its Hope Act of forcing all women 18 and over to give birth as often as possible, has created a resistance movement called the Voice. Into this turmoil comes a brilliant young hospital intern, Kira. She wants to study the one thus far unstudied aspect of the plague that still kills all human children born. Partials.
Partials is quite an adrenaline rush. There's a lot of action and several quests, starting, but not ending, with Kira's quest to find and capture a partial. While I wasn't always convinced that their plans would work as well as they did, enough things went wrong that I was willing to overlook how often enough went right.
Kira herself was an interesting character. She's borderline irritating, in that she's stubborn and ‘knows' the best course of action, despite only being 16 and a ‘plague baby' (ie, someone born just before the end of the modern world and too young to know what happened with the partials from personal experience). What redeems her is her reliance on her friends and her willingness to accept a change of plans when necessary.
What really sets this book apart is in its realistic depiction of society. There's a wide spectrum of viewpoints, each valid given the circumstances. East Meadows slowly becomes more and more of a dictatorship, as the Voice attacks escalate and the senate institutes more laws to keep the citizens ‘safe', or, as Kira starts to believe, ‘controlled'. Even the principle characters argue over the right and wrong of the senate's decrees. Particularly the debated decision of lowering the Hope Act to include those 16 and up (which would affect them directly). The disconnect between the older generation and the ‘plague babies', shown by the adults' disdain, was also well written.
My only complaint was that you don't learn as much about the partials as you'd like. This book is set up for a sequel, so I'm hoping the partials - and ParaGen, the company that created them - will have more of a part to play.
I'll be waiting eagerly for the next book in this series.
2.5 stars. Don't want to click on stars & bring down the average since I'm not YA audience.
A fun, quick summer read. Kyra is strong and smart and stands up for her beliefs. Getting to see the dystopian government corruption and the decisions that lead up to it were interesting. And, although it was a small moment, I enjoyed Wells addressing that it is nice to feel protected, but that Kyra doesn't have to be because she is strong enough to do it herself.
Looking forward to Book 2.
