Lisa Reviews: Dan Wells' - "Partials"

Dan Wells introduces his readers to a world in complete shambles with only a small percent of humans left. Cities are wild and over grown, and the population is continuing to dwindle with no babies surviving more than three or four days.

Kira is interning at the hospital, hoping to somehow help this epidemic. She wants to find the reason why these babies aren’t surviving and to then find a cure. It’s only been a few weeks, and Kira has already witnessed more than enough babies and mothers go through this pain of losing another life. But when Kira’s best friend is pregnant, she knows she has to do something, anything, to save that baby, and fast.

The only thing Kira can think of, is to go out of the city limits, and capture a partial to do some testing. But will she actually be able to find one? People haven’t seen a Partial since the war ended over ten years ago. And how will she know what she is looking for?

Partials has one of the most interesting cast of characters I’ve ever encountered in a book. This world has been destroyed by war, leaving a small percent of humans as well as a population of Partials – robots that were created by humans over a decade ago to fight for them in wars.

Kira is the strong leading female character that I love and search for in almost every book I read lately. I enjoy having a kick butt girl taking the lead in such a completely dangerous and destroyed world. What pulled me in, and caused me to like Kira from the start, was her character’s strength. Dan Wells showed this to the readers within the first few pages, when she asked her boss at the hospital if it was okay for the mother to hold her dead baby. This might not seem like much to us, but in the world Kira lives in, babies die every single day, the people don’t waste time by letting the mother hold the baby.

Another character that stole my heart was Marcus, Kira’s boyfriend. Even though we don’t get to know him or see him too often throughout the story, we get to learn right away that he cares a lot for Kira and wants nothing but to be with her. He was such a sweet guy and sometimes throughout Partials I found myself wishing that Kira would give him more of her attention, that she would love  and care for him, just as much as he did for her.

Samm is another one of the main characters, but unlike Kira or Marcus, Samm is a Partial. He sees the world and the destruction from a different point of view. Unlike many other Partials, Samm seems to want peace between his own kind and humans. While I don’t dislike him, he is kind of dark and mysterious, and I don’t yet know what to think of him. Samm seems honest, and seems to want what Kira and her friends want; peace.

While Partials had many twists, turns and unexpected events happen throughout the story, I do have to say that the end result was a bit predictable. Many other things that happened along the way that boggled my mind, but the overall goal Kira and her team had, was accomplished, which I felt like I knew would happen. If I hadn’t already read Fragments, I would be fan-girling to all of you right now, about how excited I am to read it!

Overall the story, the entire idea of Partials, and the characters made the book for me and was what pushed me to read the next book Fragments. I do have to say the one thing that let me down about this book was the predictable ending. It didn’t bother me that much, but I did wish for more of an explosive kind of end to Partials.