Customer Reviews

Partials

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pros: realistic societal tensions in a post-apocalyptic world, compelling quests, strong female protagonist

Cons: don't learn as much about the partials as you'd like, the protagonists get out of several tough situations with surprising ease

For Parents: no sex, no swearing, lots of violence, but nothing too graphic (shooting/death, off stage torture)

It's been 11 years since the genetically engineered partials rose up against their human creators, unleashing a virus that decimated the human population. Now, the remaining survivors live on Long Island, most in the community of East Meadow, which, due to its Hope Act of forcing all women 18 and over to give birth as often as possible, has created a resistance movement called the Voice. Into this turmoil comes a brilliant young hospital intern, Kira. She wants to study the one thus far unstudied aspect of the plague that still kills all human children born. Partials.

Partials is quite an adrenaline rush. There's a lot of action and several quests, starting, but not ending, with Kira's quest to find and capture a partial. While I wasn't always convinced that their plans would work as well as they did, enough things went wrong that I was willing to overlook how often enough went right.

Kira herself was an interesting character. She's borderline irritating, in that she's stubborn and 'knows' the best course of action, despite only being 16 and a 'plague baby' (ie, someone born just before the end of the modern world and too young to know what happened with the partials from personal experience). What redeems her is her reliance on her friends and her willingness to accept a change of plans when necessary.

What really sets this book apart is in its realistic depiction of society. There's a wide spectrum of viewpoints, each valid given the circumstances. East Meadows slowly becomes more and more of a dictatorship, as the Voice attacks escalate and the senate institutes more laws to keep the citizens 'safe', or, as Kira starts to believe, 'controlled'. Even the principle characters argue over the right and wrong of the senate's decrees. Particularly the debated decision of lowering the Hope Act to include those 16 and up (which would affect them directly). The disconnect between the older generation and the 'plague babies', shown by the adults' disdain, was also well written.

My only complaint was that you don't learn as much about the partials as you'd like. This book is set up for a sequel, so I'm hoping the partials - and ParaGen, the company that created them - will have more of a part to play.

I'll be waiting eagerly for the next book in this series.

This book was one of my most highly anticipated books of 2012- everything about it intrigued me (especially the tagline, "The only hope for humanity isn't human"), however, after having finished it I must admit that I am a tad disappointed with it (I can't help but wonder, did I set my expectations too high? To an almost unattainable level?).

My largest complaint about this book would be how militaristic and science-y the storyline was and how in-depth of detail the author went into said parts. While I was reading all of the science-y stuff I constantly found my mind drifting off/ my eyes crossing, for instance portions of the book such as this: "... a screen full of viral images, a series of reports on the viral structure. It had two forms, one for blood and one for air; the Blob and the Spore, the yellow and the blue... The Spore was tiny, perfect for traveling through the air..." (46%). If I had to guesstimate I would say that at least a quarter of the book involved Kira standing in front of a computer screen analyzing the Paritals blood (while reading these parts I was super grateful that I have some background knowledge of how the human body works because had I not I know that I would have been even more so lost).

That being said, I LOVED the characters of this book- main characters and secondary characters alike! I think that this batch of characters is actually the strongest (mentally, physically, and emotionally) that I have ever read before (from Kira, to Samm, to Isolde, to Madison and Xochi). Furthermore, while it was one of the "big secrets" that was revealed in this book was somewhat glaringly obvious in my opinion, that didn't alter my opinion of the book whatsoever (unlike a few other books that I have read recently, including "Blood Magic" and "Cinder") because the possibilities that it presents are endless (AKA the sequel is bound to be epic).

All in all, while I was a tad disappointed with this book was a tad disappointing I did enjoy it overall. This is a book that I know that I will read time and time again and I cannot wait to see what Dan has in store for us in the next book (here's hoping that a relationship between Samm and Kira develops in the next book- I can't be the only person who wants this to happen, right?).