Partials by Dan Wells

For some reason I randomly decided to take a two-week break from Partials by Dan Wells when I was fifty pages away from finishing it… I’m not really sure why, but I guess life just got in the way and I didn’t have enough time to read…. Anyway, this book took me about a month to get through, but that doesn’t mean that it was bad! On the contrary, I really liked it!

            Partials: humanoid robots that the US created to use in the Isolation War, but they didn’t think that the Partials would rebel against the government due to poor working conditions; the world was then decimated by RM, a disease that the humans believe the Partials created to kill them. It’s been eleven years since the Partial War and the release of RM and the human population is under 40,000, all of them living on New York’s Long Island in a town called East Meadow. With all of the newborns dying from RM, only those with the resistance survived, but none of the newborns now seem to be born with this trait. Trying to remedy this, the Senate established the Hope Act, which says that every woman aged eighteen and older must get pregnant as often as possible. There is talk of lowering the age to sixteen, which makes even more people angry and defect to the Voice, the rebel organization that fights against the Hope Act.

Kira works in the maternity ward and she’s tired of watching babies die. Convinced that the Partials are the key to curing RM, she goes to the mainland, captures a Partial, and brings him back to East Meadow, all without the consent of the Senate. Upon her return, she is punished by being the one to study the Partial. Upon regaining consciousness, the Partial tells her that his name is Samm and that the Partials were not the ones to create RM. He also tells her that the Partials are dying (for they can’t reproduce and the humans put a “time limit” on their existence when they created them). Both humanity and the Partials must work together to solve their problems. Will the decade-long enemies be able to work together? Or will both species go extinct before they finally agree to peace?

Whoo, sorry for that lengthy description! This book is just really super complicated, so I felt that it needed a long explanation or you just wouldn’t get it. Not because you’re stupid, just because it was a really complicated book. Anyway, the characters:

Kira was a really strong character, maybe not so much physically, but mentally and emotionally. Throughout the entirety of the book, she was willing to give up her life for what she believed in and when she made a promise, she kept it. Even though all of he other people in the community were saying “We need to save humanity and cure RM!” no one would actually go out and do it. Their only solution was to have a billion kids, but clearly that wasn’t working; Kira was the only one brave enough to put her life on the line for the rest of humanity and I really respect her for that. Overall, she was a really great character!

Marcus was the funniest person that I have ever met or read about in my entire life. The things he says are just so hilarious that I legitimately laugh out loud. He was hands-down the best character in the book. However, I don’t think that he’s right for Kira romantically; she’s destined to lead a crazy life full of danger, but he just wants a quiet life with a family, so I think that the Partial, Samm, is much more suited for Kira because he can take so much more of what life is going to throw at her because he’s kinda a robot… but also still human-ish… it’s complicated.

All of the other supporting characters, like Samm, Jayden (so much love for him), and Xochi were AMAZING. Except for Haru. I hated his guts and I just wanted him to go away; he was SO ANNOYING and he bothered me A LOT. I was secretly hoping for his untimely death the entire time… :/ oops I’m a bad person…

So the first quarter of the book completely bored me, almost to the point where I was dying a slow, torturous death. Literally NOTHING happened. NOTHING AT ALL. The only reason I kept reading was because of Marcus; he was SO HILARIOUS! He was definitely my favorite part of the book. The things that he said and the jokes that he made were so funny I was actually laughing out loud. I seriously wish that he was a real person because we would be best friends J However, after the first quarter of the book, it became COMPLETELY AMAZING. I got so caught up in the story and the characters that I couldn’t put it down! It’s actually the introduction of Samm that made the story so exciting. The characters ran into so many obstacles that it was really interesting to see how they dealt with them and got around them. There were points when I thought, “There is NO WAY they will be able to get out of this one!” but they would end up getting out of it in a completely believable, and surprising way. The ending was awesome and makes me want to read the next one SO BAD! It made me cry a little bit because *semi-spoiler alert, but not really*one of my favorite characters died and it completely devastated me. Like, completely L

It’s like you pay for the amazingness in the book with the near-death experience of reading the first part of it. After reading the whole thing I would say that it’s definitely worth it! I am SO EXCITED to read the second book, Fragments, after that cliffhanger ending!

I loved this book, but the beginning was equivalent to dying. 4 Smileys!