Many people today fear the possibility of a doomsday at the hands of technology becoming too advanced and essentially just taking over everything. In the story, Partials, by Dan Wells, that image is presented through the post apocalyptic society known as New Earth. At the beginning of the tale, the reader is introduced to the main character, Kira. Through Kira’s thoughts the reader learns all about the catastrophe that killed 99% of the world's population. According to Kira everyone died at the hands of half man - half machine creatures known as partials. At the book’s start, twelve years had passed since the Partial War ended, yet the remaining government still remained mostly in shambles. Oh by the way did I mention that humans can no longer reproduce? Yeah so it turns out the partials also released a virus that prevents humans from bearing healthy children and every birthed baby dies a couple hours after said action. (The action of being birthed, if that wasn’t clear) This is where good ol’ Kira comes it once again, she’s a talented doctor who just graduated from medical school, and has the great aspiration of finding a cure to the fatal disease. After further study, she realizes there is only one possible way to end the evil ailment, by finding and studying a partial.

Needless to say, this is a dark, and gritty read not for those who are faint of heart. There are multiple descriptive death scenes, and a vividly detailed description of a mother crying over her dying baby. But the story also remains compelling through its entirety, and the main character is interesting to some extent. Unfortunately it's also completely humorless, save for a few one liners from Kira’s lover, Marcus, and there's a wide arching romance story that I wont get into, but it's underwhelming to say the least. Overall, the book is a great read for those interested in dark, depressing post-apocalyptic stories but it doesn't really give much incentive for other types of readers to give it a look. The way I see, it the author really stuck to their guns on this one, staying with their own theme and writing style rather than pandering to other types of audiences and I can really appreciate that. In the end, it's not a bad book, my final rating for it is 7.8/9.3 stars.

Final Rating :   7.8/9.3 stars