Partials: Review

Synopsis:

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.

***

(This review might contain some small spoilers)

You have to believe me when I say I can't believe I actually finished this book. Because well, I've been struggling to read it but always stopped short. The book actually starts out really slow and the interesting part for me only begins in part 2. So yeah, part 1 is almost like a pain-in-my-ass to read. 

But when it comes to part 2 of the story, things become more and more interesting. There are Partial characters that involved with human characters. And yeah, you might think Partials are machines (biological machines. But machines nonetheless). And in a way they are. But they have a mind of their own too, which is somehow... fascinating. Who knows a Partial can care for a human?

The best part of the book is probably those medical things. Yep, I'm a big fan of medical stuff and I always want to be a doctor. And the RM, the Spore, the Blob, the Predator, and the Lurker. They are horrifying yet really amazing. It's like you are the one watching RM functioning itself. Those experiments are quite a ride of heart, somehow. I love it.

And Kira... well, Kira doesn't make a very strong impression on me. But at least I don't despise her. I think she truly deserves a better life with a boy that she truly wants to be. There are rumors (actually, they are more facts than rumors) that there will be a love triangle brewing in Partials (and possibly Fragments). And I was like "not again". But much to my surprise and relief, there are really few jealous moments in Partials. And there's the whole what-really-is-Kira thing. And damn if that's not one big cliffhanger in Partials. 

I said that the book starts out really slow. And indeed it is. It's almost painful to read the first part of the story. But the plot gets better and better throughout the book. Interesting stuff always pop out from nowhere in part 2 and 3 of the story. There's the relationship. Complicated, but not complicated enough to make me annoyed. I think I'm starting to learn how to like this series. Even though this is not the best dystopian series I've ever read.

Rating: 7/10