Partials by Dan Wells

Partials by Dan Wells

Publisher: Balzer + Bray    
Publication date: March 1st 2012
My rating: 4 stars

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.

Before I start reviewing this book I need to point something out. This book came out more than a year ago and that's how long it's been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. I could kick myself for not picking it up sooner but I guess, back then, I wasn't into sci-fi dystopian novels. Even today I'm sceptic cause I find most of them boring. 

That's not the case with Partials. It blew me away. The beginning was rather slow but once you figure out who's who  and their whole world starts making sense it's captivating. 

Kira is living on Long Island with other remaining survivors after the war with Partials and deadly virus RM which wiped out 99.996% world population. Newborns die couple of hours after their birth because their immune system can't fight RM. Kira is tired of watching babies die(she works as a medic) and after her friend ends up pregnant she is determined to find the cure for RM. They decide to capture one of the Partials to run some tests on him. 

Kira is one of the strongest heroines I've come across but she can be so infuriating. She's dead set on doing the right thing even if that thing would get her hurt or even killed. She doesn't see any gray areas. Her world is all black and white and it was pretty annoying hearing her judge everyone. Don't get me wrong, she's great but she was a little bit too good for my taste. I need to see some flaws in my main characters. 

I couldn't get this out of my head and if some of you reading this already read Partials, please help me out get this one thing which didn't make any sense. Why did people create partials? I know there was a mention of a war and humans didn't wanted to kill each others so they created partials, terminators who look like regular people to fight instead of them. Who were they fighting against? Which nation? After that war partials turned against their creators because they were treated as slaves. I can understand why they rebelled and fought back to earn their freedom but it puzzles me why were they even created. And one more thing wouldn't be cheaper to create a partial with the same face and clone him, or whatever they did rather than creating other races and sexes? That's what I would do, to save up. I'm not racist or sexist. 

There were some interesting characters, Marcus, Kira's boyfriend who's always up for a laugh, Samm, a partial who ends up helping Kira to find the cure and the loyal and fierce soldier, Jayden. Now I'm just gonna say something which is very typical of me. I had a crush on Jayden. There. I said it. I can't control my feelings towards fictional characters. I'm not crazy for lusting over a guy in almost every book I read, right?

Now that I've read Partials I want to bash my head on my desk because I don't have the sequel and I'm broke so who knows when I'm going to find out what happens next with Kira and the gang. This is why I don't read the first book in a series if I don't already have the sequel. It's pure torture.