Ironic How The Title and My Opinion Are So Similar.

Hey world! Another Wednesday is here, and this week I only have one book to review! Kind of strange - usually I have at least two. But hey, sometimes books take longer to read. Plus, I was feeling really contemplative recently and it takes time to puzzle out the complexities of multi-dimensional space travel through wormholes. And after all that thinking, my results were less than conclusive. I guess because it's all theoretical. I just dropped something, and now I don't remember what it was. That seems less than awesome. 

So, I recently finished a book called Partials by Dan Wells ( <- official website link) (blog). It is the first book in the Partials Sequence - because apparently it's a sequence and not a series. I wonder if that means book two will have different characters or something. Fun times. I think the sequence currently has three books and a novella. 

Summaryish: After the genetically engineered Partials created to fight wars for human rebel, and a deadly virus is unleashed that kills 99.9% of all humans and no immune children have been born in 11 years, Kira, a medic in training, must cure the illness somehow before humans go extinct. And the only way to do that seems to be hidden in the physiology of the Partials that destroyed them all. 

Review: Okay. Let's start at the beginning. The first 200 pages, give or take a few, were not painful. But they certainly weren't awesome, either. But after I got over that all-too-easily tune-outable hump, the story got exponentially better, as well as the writing. I never achieved glued-to-the-pages status, but I did start enjoying myself. And with 468 pages in all, I had a good experience for over half the book which is enough to make me want to keep going, at least for one more installment. I think the problem had to do with the stiff characters. They loosened up after a while, but they just weren't put into situations that reveal their character early enough, which made me feel distant. I could have been reading about anyone, when I wanted to be reading about someone unquestionably "Kira." And now that all that necessary backstory is over with, I have hope for the rest of the series. In addition, the wild plot twists at the end, which were perfectly foreshadowed, were excellent - they kept me guessing, which is always great.

Words to the Characters:

Kira: What do you look like? I don't remember ever being told.

Samm: Ooo, mixed feelings. Always the best kind.

Okay, see you next week!

-Xxxxxx