Partials by Dan Wells

Genre: Science Fiction YA
Publication Date: February 28, 2012
Pages: 472
Source: Received a review copy from the publisher

Goodreads Summary:

The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the population. Reduced to 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 threaten to launch what’s left of humanity into 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 discover 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. 

Dan Wells, acclaimed author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, takes readers on a pulse-pounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question—one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival.


My Opinion:

I loved Partials by Dan Wells! This book immediately appealed to me because of the tagline: The only hope for humanity isn’t human. At first that made me wonder if perhaps this was an alien invasion story. It turned out to be even cooler — Partials are robots created to look exactly like humans. But while they look exactly like humans, they are actually fighting machines, and were built to help out with fighting wars. Something went wrong though, and the Partials rebelled against the humans. During this war they released a virus called RM that killed 99.99% of the human population.

When Partials begins, we’re introduced to the main character, Kira. Kira is a doctor who just completed her internship, and she is determined to figure out the cure to RM. Because while a small percentage of humans were immune to the disease, no baby has lived for 14 years. So the cure needs to be discovered, or the human race will eventually die out.

Kira is doing research and she realizes that the key to curing RM might depend on studying those who created it — the Partials. This is where the adventure begins. There is always something going on, leading to a new discovery. Also, while it’s a YA book, I found that it seemed to be geared towards older readers, even sounding more like an adult book at times.

Without giving anything away, I just have to say that a MAJOR fact was revealed near the end of the book that left me staring at the page thinking, “OMG I can’t believe that’s true!” It changed what the entire book was about. Read the book, and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Partials is one of those books that after you read it, you think about what an amazing read it was. It’s on the longer side, and there were a few times when the pace slowed down a bit. However, Partials is fantastic and I highly recommend picking it up! I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.