Partials (Partials Sequence, #1)

by Dan Wells

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.

• ISBN10: 0062071041
• ISBN13: 9780062071040
• Publish Date: 28 February 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 480
• Language: English

Reviews

[alisoninbookland]

-Hooray! I got some science in my science fiction. That really excites me. It’s not only a science fiction book, but it’s also got some medical thriller mixed in. I always find medical thrillers to be particularly scary since it doesn’t matter how strong or smart you are, the virus will always get you.

-To a certain extent, some of the story was predictable: sneaking over the Partials side, getting caught, having a corrupt government, a touch of romance. Thankfully the predictable bits have some spice to them to make interesting.

-There were a few good twists in the book that kicked the book from “enjoyable” to “pretty good.”
Overall it was pretty readable. Yes, there’s quite a bit of action but it’s not overwhelming. You get sprinkles of politics and medicine mixed in. All 3 of those work together really well. I finished the book rather quickly over 2 days.

-I liked Kira as a heroine. I loved that she was intelligent and that was an asset rather than something negative.

-Yay for a multicultural group of characters!

-Not only was there a corrupt government, there were all sorts of other bad guys in the story: the Voice, the Partials, and the Trust. That obviously makes the story more interesting but it also adds depth. There’s never just the good guys and the bad guys. Everyone has done some right and wrong. Now you can’t just write off a group of people. I think we’re going to need everyone to figure out the problem.

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[Angie]

Partials was a thrilling, action packed, and awesome journey! 99.996% of humanity has been killed by a virus known as RM. They all believe a group of lab created humans, known as Partials, released the virus in order to win a war. Eleven years later, there's still no cure, and no one has seen a Partial. Kira is an intern in the maternity ward and she's sick of seeing babies die every single day, so she devices a plan. She's going to track down a Partial and study its blood and tissues to find the cure. But her research leads her to so much more than she was anticipating or could even fathom.

Partials gets off to a slow start, but I didn't find myself bored. I was immediately immersed in this screwed up future. There is no way in heck I'd want to live here, where I'd be forced to get pregnant as often as possible in hopes of having a baby who was immune to RM. No way! Humanity is desperate, since there's less than 40,000 of them left, so the government has essentially hijacked women's bodies to be breeding factories. The slow development of the world did frustrate me at times, because it brought up a lot of questions. Some things seemed like glaring plot holes, but really, we just didn't get all of the information until later. However, once information starts rolling it, it's nonstop until the end!

What I loved most about Partials was its focus on science! There's a lot of sciencey goodness, especially in the middle when Kira is doing her research. I only have a basic understanding of genetics, but I still really enjoyed all of her notes on the structure of the virus and its development. Dystopian settings based on some kind of virus or natural disaster are my favorite kind, and this one was especially well developed, even if it came in chunks. Nothing is what it seems and there's an awesome twist that I never saw coming! Although when I thought back on previous details, it all made sense! I love when that happens!

Something else that I think sets Partials apart from other books in the genre, and YA in general, is that there's not a lot of focus on romance and there's no love triangle. Kira is already in a relationship with Marcus when the book starts. He's pushing for a stronger commitment, but Kira is focused on creating a better future which does cause some tension between them. I was fully expecting something to happen between her and the Partial she captures, but nope. There is undeniably some connection between them, but what that will turn into isn't clear. I'm hoping that it stays platonic, but we'll see.

I really enjoyed Partials. It has a detailed world and well-rounded characters. It's action packed and exciting, and I was never bored, even when there's a lull in the action. The only thing that really bothered me, other than the slow reveal of information, was the fact that no one knows anything about the Partials even though they were created by humans. In all of those database searches Kira did, shouldn't she have come across at least some basic biological information about them? Unless this is one of those things that has yet to be revealed...

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

The first half of this book had me pretty bored, I nearly put it down several times, the only reason I continued reading was because I own the second book and didn't want to have wasted my money. Luckily for me about 150-250 page in it got very interesting. Which is a long time for a book to pick up. It did get a tad boring again after three quarters but I pushed through till the end and was glad for it.

So while half of this book was boring the other was was super interesting. Still if I didn't own this book I probably wouldn't have tried to push through. I wanted to give this book more starts but I just couldn't.

[celinenyx]

With world building reminding me of a YA version of Mira Grant's Feed, Partials is a great addition to the post-apocalyptic and dystopian genres.

After RM killed 99,996% of the human race, only a few thousand are huddled together on Long Island. They are immune - but their babies aren't. For eleven years, not a single newborn has lived more than four days. Kira works on maternity ward, and can't take it any more. They looked for a cure everywhere - except at the Partials, part-human weapons that spread RM in the first place.

Ahhhhh, the world-building! I loved it. Realisticly corrupt governments, a good understanding of crowd mentality and a believable back story. I loved the background of Partials. After the (in my opinion unrealistic) world in YA dystopians like Delirium and Matched it's great to finally read a dystopian again I can actualy believe in.

Maybe the biggest reason I liked Partials better than a lot of other dystopians is because it's not nearly as girly as most. Romance mainly takes the background (Kira has a steady boyfriend named Marcus) and even if it's there, it's about two people in a relationship, instead of two people falling in love. There is a huge difference between the two, and I enjoyed reading about being in a relationship for once, since only few books deal with the actual "after" of happily ever after. Apart from that, Partials has quite some gun fights, secret nightly missions, bombings, and some science-heavy parts. I thought this was great - Mr Wells doesn't turn Kira into the female gun-toting archetype, but managed to keep her human (she's not all that great with guns) but make her self-sufficient enough that she can take care of herself. The science was rather heavy at times, especially on chemistry and micro-biology level, but it added to the believability of the story. I'm quite the biology nut myself, and I loved those parts.

There are a few minor things I got troubles with. Samm, the partial Kira meets, wasn't quite believable for me. His actions didn't feel logical, especially in the beginning. Another thing that irks me is that the virus is called RM. What does RM stand for? How come no one ever uses the unabridged name? Maybe this mysteries will be solved in the next book, Fragments.

Overall I loved Partials. Although the ending was a bit mild compared to the build-up, and though I didn't necessarily liked the direction the main characters are going, Partials was a great read that I would recommend to the non-romantic YA dystopian fans.

[Kelly]

3.5 Stars
http://divainpyjamas.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/partials-by-dan-wells.html

Partials wasn't at all what I expected and was surprisingly good, but not great. There is far too much to the storyline all at once, and I felt bombarded, it was just too busy.. It short, it's a post apocalyptic world, where super soldiers were created, essentially artificial humans. A deadly virus was released upon the world, and the only known settlements are the community on the island, and a rebel group called The Voice. Mix that in with a killer virus, forced pregnancies on eighteen year old girls, and lengthy speeches regarding genetics, scientific research, and the story ends up busier than an ice cream truck at a Weight Watchers meeting.

It's not all bad, it was actually more often entertaining and thrilling... In places. Since Partials took care of all the explanations, I'd be interested to read the next in the series, I have a suspicion I may in fact enjoy the next one far more.

[Stephanie]

I really, really liked the world. I even liked the plot. But gosh dang, did I not sympathize, empathize or anything-ize with the main character. I couldn't tell side characters apart, and the only person that interested me was Samm, and he was an emotionless robot (not a literal robot, but you know, a personality trait).

Plus the pace was slow. The medical stuff was getting really confusing at some points because we were reading Kira's thought process and hypothesizing -- which honestly, didn't matter to me. And then the end was just a mess of ridiculous plans after ridiculous plans. Sigh. I really wanted to like this book, since it was one of the few that didn't boast about a romantic interest in the inside flap. And while there really wasn't romantic (Kira was dating a guy named Marcus, but it seemed like a weak unnecessary character thing), it still didn't make the book more interesting.

I wished this was better. It was just.. meh.

[Ashley]

As posted on booknook - YA and Fantasy book reviews

It did take me a little while to settle into this book. I was really excited to learn about the world and the characters, but the first 50 pages started out a little slow. But around page 150 or so, things really picked up and I got completely hooked! Like “OHEMGEE, MUST SLEEP WITH THIS BOOK AT NIGHT SO NO ONE STEALS IT” hooked. This book is everything I love and more: strong heroine, deathly virus, biological robots, war, dystopia, and conspiracy. It’s a perfect example of why I adore the dystopian genre, and it has become one of my all time favourites!

In the midst of the Isolation War against the Chinese, an American company called ParaGen created some biological army robots called Partials, hoping that they would help them win. The Partials did win the war for them, but afterwards, they turned on their creators and launched a new war against them. During the war, they released a weaponized virus that killed 99.996% of the human population, leaving only a few immune survivors on Long Island. It has been over a decade since the RM virus was released and humanity has a new problem: no baby has been born immune to the disease.

In a desperate attempt to cure RM virus, Kira sneaks beyond the borders of Long Island to capture a Partial. She's convinced that Partials, who are immune to RM, hold the key to developing a cure to the virus. But once she captures a Partial, she begins to realize things about these robots that she had never considered. What if they had an 'almost' good reason for turning on their creators? What if they weren't the ones who released the RM virus? What if there's something larger and darker going on?

Partials deals with a lot of science. After all, it is about a deadly virus and biological machines. The bulk of the story is about Kira working as a researcher, trying to analyze the RM virus and find a cure, so we read about a lot of scientific terms and experiments. It's far from dull though! While reading it, I was just as excited and eager as Kira to learn more, even though I know very little about science.

But what really makes this story fascinating is being able to hear from both sides. The humans and the Partials had a terrible war, but in the book, we get to hear from both the human side and the Partial side. It's fascinating to read about their different perceptions and thoughts. Kira grew up learning that Partials are horrible, evil robots. But when she meets one, she finds herself listening to it and sympathizing with it. But the Partial is held in captivity, so as a reader you can't help but wonder if the Partial is actually telling the truth, or if he's just spreading lies as part of his plan to escape or infiltrate the human civilization.

As much as Partials is about biological robots and viruses, it is also about politics. The small government on Long Island likes to have control. But the harder they try to save the human race, the more control they exercise and the more crazy laws they implement — like the Hope Act, which requires everyone 18 and older to get pregnant as often as possible. I loved reading about the Senate in this book, the laws they passed, the way they tried to keep control, and the way the citizens rebelled against it. At first I almost didn't know which side to take. Sure the government was a bit overbearing, but you could also understand where they were coming from and their desperate desire to save the human race. But soon enough, we start to see conspiracies and lies popping up, that intrigued me even more!

I loved Marcus and Kira's relationship! At the beginning of the book they were already dating, and I thought that was such a refreshing change! Almost all books these days have a romance that is only just beginning. We watch the characters crush, have doubts, and fall in love. While that can be nice, it can also get a little routine. But in Partials, the two characters are already dating. They have a really sweet relationship and it's so nice to see them act like a comfortable — but still great and romantic — couple. They did have their arguments, and their ups and downs (some of which were really frustrating!), but don't all relationships? It felt very real and I loved reading about Kira's feelings for Marcus and her doubts about their relationship.

I am so glad that Partials exceeded my expectations! I had high hopes for this book and it didn't disappoint. It reminded me of some of my favourite robot/virus movies like iRobot and I Am Legend. I'm dying to know more about Kira and the Partials and can't wait to read the second book, Fragments.

[Kelsenator]

Originally posted on my blog Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf

I haven’t read a good sci-fi book in a while, and this was definitely good. The beginning was a bit slow for me, but I think that was because I just finished reading a really good book, and didn’t give myself a break before diving into this one.

Kira lives in a world where most of humanity has died from a virus called RM. She has devoted herself to working as a medic and wants to help with the cause of finding a cure. No babies have been born in over 10 years, they die shortly after birth. So the Senate of the city has a Hope Act in place, where anyone over a certain age must become pregnant, in order to see if they can have a baby that survives. Because of this act, a rebel group called the Voice is trying to bring down the Senate.

Things get to the point where the age goes down again, one of Kira’s friends gets pregnant, and her only option is to leave the city in hope of finding a Partial, the ones held responsible for releasing the RM. She wants to capture one and study them, but finding them first is the hard part. No one has seen a Partial since the war.

I won’t give away the story, but there is a lot of adventure, risk taking and fun involved. I definitely liked Kira, how she wouldn’t give up trying to help others, even when she finds out what’s really happening behind the scenes.

It’s a Sci-fi/Dystopian blend set in an Apocalyptic world after a crazy war that wipes out almost everyone. It’s a larger book to get trough, at almost 500 pages, but it does not disappoint!

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

The future looks really bleak, and it’s up to one girl; Kira to save it. Mankind is going extinct as a result of the Judgement Day Partials war; an airborne virus is killing all new born babies. The governments solution; every woman over 18 16 must keep getting pregnant (naturally or artificially) in order for further testing to find the solution. 16 year old researcher Kira is determined to find the answer to the virus and save mankind; her quest leads her to turn to the Partials (genetically modified humans and mankinds greatest enemy) in the hopes to find the solution. This leaves Kira in a tricky situation; will she side with the government, the rebellion or the Partials?

This novel is pretty interesting; I like the story and I’m interested to see where it will lead in the future. While this is typically a YA novel as appose to a post-apocalyptic thrillers means the writing, violence and complexity of this book feels like it has been dumbed down; to an extent that sometimes is not very enjoyable. I really enjoy Dan Wells as a writer but I would like to see him move away from young adult fiction and do something darker, disturbing and more complex. I feel like he has it in him but due to the limitations of YA he holds back a lot. I would love to give this a 4 out of 5 but I can’t, it’s a 3 and a half star novel.

[Amber]

Review here: http://booksofamber.blogspot.com/2012/02/partials-by-dan-wells.html

Partials had a really slow start during the first third of the book. There were some big events - a bomb, a new law etc - but it didn't feel as though anything was happening. However, about 30% of the way in, this book finally started to pick up and it didn't stop, even at the end.

Dan Wells writes EXCELLENT action scenes. I was on the edge of my seat, and it was all very exciting. Everything was described perfectly, and I honestly don't think I've ever read any action sequences that are better written than these.

The ending was brilliant, and I'm really impressed at how Dan Wells kept the pacing way up there right until the very end.

There are a few plot twists, a couple of which I saw coming due to various clues in the story. I was also suspecting a lot of people of not being loyal to Kira and her cause, which I loved. I love not knowing who to trust!

The main character, Kira, is annoying. Really, REALLY annoying. She has a real temper, and she doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. She snaps over the slightest thing, and it got on my nerves. There is one scene in which her friend said something to her and Kira went crazy and started clawing at her face. Crazy. That said, there were times when I thought she was a really strong character. I hope she grows up in the next book. I also wish that she had been a bit older. She was really intelligent and worked as a medic, but she was only 16. I think if she had been 18 or so, and the story had been adjusted, it would have been more realistic.

Marcus, Kira's boyfriend, wasn't that great either. He's childish, moody, and I didn't like him. I have to admit, though, he did have some funny lines!

Now, there's also a character called Samm. I. LOVED. HIM. He was definitely my favourite character, as if you couldn't tell! He had some really funny lines, and he was badass.

Not many side characters I cared for apart from Jayden. He was an awesome character, and I wish we could have seen more of him as I was loving every moment that focussed on him.

Overall, this book was good! Despite the slow start, I really enjoyed reading it and the dystopian world it's set in is really well constructed with a horrible government! I'd definitely recommend it if you don't mind a main character like Kira or a book that lacks much romance!