Ruins by Dan Wells

Genre:  YA Dystopian

Partials Sequence, Book 3

Dan Wells' website

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Description (taken from Dan Wells' website):

Kira, Samm, and Marcus fight to prevent a final war between Partials and humans in the gripping final installment in the Partials Sequence, a series that combines the thrilling action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Blade Runner and The Stand.

There is no avoiding it—the war to decide the fate of both humans and Partials is at hand. Both sides hold in their possession a weapon that could destroy the other, and Kira Walker has precious little time to prevent that from happening. She has one chance to save both species and the world with them, but it will only come at great personal cost.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Partials series, this is set in a world where the humans have created a beautiful species as well as destroyed almost everything.  Trying to end world wars, a company engineered the Partials to help in combat.  Their purpose was to fight, win and restore order.  However after the war ended, they were treated as less than human.  One of our greatest creations, and we abandon it.  Thus leading to animosity between the two races.  Oh, and we kind of destroyed the climate as well.  It's a sad world.

Kira has spent her whole life trying to find a cure for RM, a disease that killed the majority of mankind and now prevents humans from having healthy babies.  And now that she's finally found it, she's trying to help the Partials survive.  When she's finally found all of the answers, she has only days to try to bring peace to the warring factions.  But can humans find peace when they're so much better at creating chaos and fighting?

I will admit that these books are huge and a lot to process.  However, they're going to make you think, and they have science.  It's very easy to draw real-world parallels to Kira's world.  And Dan Wells does it in a such a non-invasive way that you don't really think about it.  All you want is more of the story.  This book is about people trying to find a purpose in life and survive.  I feel like at the basic center, that's what all of us are trying to do.  I enjoyed this one and think it had a good ending to the series.

If you can get over how big these books are, I think anyone will enjoy them.  They don't have the kind of fluff that some novels can have, and they're not heavy on the romance.  But they're going to be good reads that keep you hooked.

Fragments by Dan Wells

Genre:  YA Dystopian

Partials Sequence Series, Book 2

Dan Wells' website

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Description (taken from Dan Wells' website):

Kira Walker has found the cure for RM, but the battle for the survival of humans and Partials is just beginning. Kira has left East Meadow in a desperate search for clues to who she is. That the Partials themselves hold the cure for RM in their blood cannot be a coincidence—it must be part of a larger plan, a plan that involves Kira, a plan that could save both races. Her companions are Afa Demoux, an unhinged drifter and former employee of ParaGen, and Samm and Heron, the Partials who betrayed her and saved her life, the only ones who know her secret. But can she trust them?

Meanwhile, back on Long Island, what's left of humanity is gearing up for war with the Partials, and Marcus knows his only hope is to delay them until Kira returns. But Kira's journey will take her deep into the overgrown wasteland of postapocalyptic America, and Kira and Marcus both will discover that their greatest enemy may be one they didn't even know existed.

Do you guys know how long this book is?  It's the longest book I've read so far this year.  And truly, that's my major complaint with this one.  It all came down to the length.  If were shorter and more succinct, I probably would have liked it more.

This book pretty much picks up where the first one left off.  Who is Kira?  Why is RM associated with the partials?  Lots of good questions in this post-apocalyptic world.  Only problem was, the first one hundred pages were spent with Kira being lost and finding nothing.  I think we got the point of how desperate she was with the first 25 pages.  But never fear, the plot picked up the more I read.

We've got Samm and Heron helping Kira find these important answers.  And we're still getting comfortable with the fact that partials are just like humans, except that they are genetically superior and have a link that can control them.  There's a new guy, Afa, and the destruction of the human race has kind of left a mark on him.  However, he tries to help Kira find those answers.  Back in the human world, all hell is breaking loose.  Humans and Partials are further divided and completely afraid of the other side (okay, partials aren't really afraid of us - sorry they're too superior).  And in this whole book, you realize there are a lot of moral questions that arise.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book.  The science is still there.  However, the moral soapbox does creep up quite a bit in this book because we're forcing people to make impossible decisions in desperate situations.  So, for me, this book would have been perfect if it were 200 pages shorter and had more science, less morals.  Still planning to read the next one.

Challenges:  Dystopia Reading Challenge

Partials by Dan Wells

Genre:  YA Dystopian

Partials Series, Book 1

Dan Wells' website

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Description (taken from Dan Wells' website):

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.

This was a good read.  There's so many twists and turns to the plot.  But I can't remember if someone had ruined this book for me, or if I was just an awesome guesser.  Because I did have this one figured out from the beginning minus a few twists that kept things interesting.

I'm not really going to talk about the plot because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  If we exclude all the questions that went unanswered, I'd say this has probably been one of my favorite dystopian reads of the year.  But there's one question that bothers the heck out of me because I don't think the book ever answered it (or I wasn't paying attention when it did): what the heck does RM stand for?????!

And then of course once I was a hundred pages into the book, I had to question if the author was from Utah.  Turns out he is.  If you want to know why I drew that conclusion, it's because this book deals a lot with pregnancy.  It's not the main theme, but it is a big one.  And Utah is notorious for having a lot of pregnant women (and that's all the explanation I'm giving).

All fans of dystopian books should read this one.  It's good.  Period.  I'll be reading the next one when it comes out.

Challenges:  Debut Author Challenge and Young Adult Reading Challenge