Partials (Partials, #1)

Partials
Dan Wells
468 pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Source: library
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

First I want to say thanks to all who voted on my "What's Next?" post last Thursday.  Partials was the winner so here's my review!  I'd seen a lot of positive blogger buzz for this book and that, combined with the long library hold list and great sound description, made me eager to read this book.

Partials focuses on a post-apocalyptic world where several humans were wiped out by RM, a virus created by the enemy in a terrible act of biological warfare.  Now the human population is smaller and has a major problem - it cannot reproduce.  All infants die within days of being born.  The government's solution is to have teens get pregnant by law, but Kira knows there has to be a better way.  If they could just capture a Partial they could study their immunity.  But Kira's plan soon turns her and her friends into a group of outlaws as both sides of the war resist their efforts.

The most interesting part of the novel for me was the science behind the RM virus and Kira's attempts to solve it.  I really enjoyed reading the sections of the book that focused on her in the lab studying the virus and I was glad to see Kira given that opportunity from the hospital administration.  She'd only been working in the hospital for a short time studying infants and it was clear that wasn't the job for her.  It only goes to show you have to do what you love!

The book loses some points from me however for being very drawn out.  Partials falls victim to "info dumps" where the author goes on for paragraphs describing background information.  I was much more interested in the actual action-packed sections of the novel, which picked up as the book continued on.  There was a particular plot twist on page 409 that really caught my attention and helped me plow through to the end.

Three stars - while I did enjoy this book, there were parts where I was bored and I admit I did skim a lot of the info dump sections.  However, hardcore fans of post-apocalyptic literature and books with medical mysteries will enjoy Partials and I highly recommend it to them.