Friday 23 November 2012

Review: Partials by Dan Wells

Partials (Partials, #1)Date Read: June 25th, 2012
Date Published: February 28th, 2012
Publishers: Balzer & Bray
Format: Hardback
Pages: 468
Blurb: The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials--engineered organic beings identical to humans--has decimated the population. Reduced to only 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 have pushed what's left of humanity to the brink of 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 find 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.

Review:
Science fictions books are one of the hardest to write. There are so many questions that must be answered within plots that sometimes aren’t. The reader has to be so submersed within the story that they are convinced it is real. Dan Wells has done this and so much more. He has created a story that we believe in and characters that are so realistic that we relate to them and root for them during their hardest times. Even when it seems that there is no hope.

Kira Walker is a plague baby. She grew up in a world with hardly any people due to the RM virus that wiped out the population. They have the Partials to thank for that, genetically engineered beings, used to win the wars, which turned on their creators. But, as the rules become harsher, Kira begins to wonder if what she has been told is correct. Was it the Partials fault? Do the people who rule really care about her? Do the Partials act the way they used to or do they want peace?

Embarking on the journey with her, a journey for the truth, Dan Wells weaves a plot full of mystery with twists and turns, and creates characters who act as we would in their situation, which makes them all the more relatable. But be warned: This book is not for those who do not enjoy complex descriptions about DNA structures or scenes where military language is used frequently.

Nevertheless, this book will grab hold of the reader and you will be so immersed that when it is over you will never look at the world the same. You will wonder whether all of this could happen and what we would do if it did.

This book is a must read for any sci-fi addict and it will blow readers out of the past and into the future with the fast pace, gruelling action sequences and enough scientific talk to make science fiction lovers fall head over heels for a book that is truly out of this world.

0 comments:

Post a Comment