Fragments (Partials Sequence, #2)

by Dan Wells

[Ashley]

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2.5 Stars

Fragments really has me torn. I feel like there were a lot of pros and cons in this book. It wasn't bad but I feel like there are a few things that I'm going to complain about a lot.

What I Liked

We do get a lot of answers in Fragments. We find out more about the Partials, how they're connected to humans, what Kira is, and what role her "parents" played in the war. I think we get all the answers I wanted, and I LOVE that. These answers are what kept me reading the book. I so desperately wanted them, and I was thrilled when I got them!

The world building in Fragments was just as epic as in Partials. This time we learn a lot about what's going on in central/west America.

What I Didn't Like

Fragments was slow as hell. I honestly think we could cut out one third to one half of the book and still understand everything perfectly. This book was WAY too descriptive for my liking. We'd have a 30 page description on how they crossed a bridge. A 20 page description about Kira tip-toeing around a room to avoid an enemy. It just dragged on and on. I found myself skipping 2-3 pages at a time just to get past the descriptions and move onto the action.

The slow pace kept me from wanting to pick the book back up. There were a few times where I actually considered putting it down because I was bored. Ultimately, it took like a week for me to finish it because I had such little desire to keep picking it back up.

This was definitely the book's biggest downfall. This was a LONG book (almost 600 pages) and I don't think it needed to be that long at all. It could have easily been cut down to 350 or 400 at most, without the story suffering because of it.

Also there's one thing that Jessi from Novel Heartbeat brought up in her review that I totally agree with. There were a few moments where the book made me feel nothing. No emotion. No sadness. Nothing. This is particularly true when a character dies. It's like pages and pages of travelling descriptions, then BAM. Right in the middle of the page. "Afa is dead". There's zero build up to it. It's literally just text inserted into the page. Just like Jessi, I actually had to go back and read the sentence like 3 times because it was so random that I didn't believe it had actually happened.

Finally, sometimes Marcus's chapters bored me. I wasn't as interested in his side of the story. I'd mope a little when I got to his chapter, because I just wanted to go back to Kira since she was the one finding all the juicy information.

Overall

I'm giving this book 3 stars, so I didn't hate it. I just think the bad pacing ruined it. But if you ignore that fact, I think it was a pretty good book. Getting all the answers to our questions was really interesting—that's what kept me going in the end. And just like the first book, Fragments had pretty epic world building.