Expected Publication Date: February 28th, 2012
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Page Count: 472 pages
Format: E-ARC
Source: Netgalley
Purchase: Amazon
*I recieved a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are mine*
Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with partials--engineered organic beings identical to humans--has decimated the world’s population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. The threat of the partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Humanity’s time is running out.When I first read the synopsis for this book I was so excited I couldn't contain myself. Sadly, I have really mixed feelings about it now. The beginning was really slow, I didn't feel like much was happening, or a lot of stuff was happening but it was overly described which just served to bore me. Enough was happening to keep me interested, and about 250 pages in things finally started to pick up! The ending was a complete cliff-hanger and now I'm just dying for the next one!
When sixteen-year-old Kira learns of her best friend’s pregnancy, she’s determined to find a solution. Then one rash decision forces Kira to flee her community with the unlikeliest of allies. As she tries desperately to save what is left of her race, she discovers that the survival of both humans and partials rests in her attempts to answer questions of the war’s origin that she never knew to ask.
Combining the fast-paced action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Battlestar Galactica, Partials is a pulse-pounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question--one where our sense of humanity is both our greatest liability, and our only hope for survival.
Kira is a great protagonist; she's strong, independent, smart, and sassy. I really liked how she took initiative to basically save the human race, despite the fact that she's only 16. She never took "no" for an answer, which definitely reminded me of me :). Her friends are all really fantastic people who completely support her no matter what kind of crazy thing she wants to do next. Although her boyfriend, Marcus, tries to tell her what to do a lot, he has good intentions and he was definitely a sweet-heart. I do wish there was a little more romance between the two, since I'm a big YA romance junkie, but at least there wasn't some stupid love-triangle.
The writing is really in depth, and there is a lot of thorough world-building going on, but sometimes I felt like it was too much. I tended to skip over a lot of paragraphs, simply because I was getting bored with whatever was happening. The story is also really medical, since Kira is trying to find a cure for RM, and I had a hard time following what was happening with that most of the time. Science and I do not mix, so it was hard for me to focus on all the medical jargon and testing and what not. The story really picks up in the last 200 pages though and a lot of stuff starts happening and things are revealed and people DIE! By then, I was screaming and reading furiously and I just had to know what was going to happen!!!
Overall, I liked Partials enough to continue reading and eventually I was really into it. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to get into the story, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The ending is definitely an incredible cliff-hanger and I can't wait to find out what Dan Wells has up his sleeve for the next book! Fans of dystopian and sci fi will like this one, but if you need romance in your novels you won't really find it here!