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Nickie's Reviews > Partials
Partials (Partials Sequence, #1)
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I feel like this review should begin like one of the old AlkaSeltzer commercials.
"I can't believe I read the whole thing."
I try to be balanced on my reviews, but this book made it very difficult. There were a million little things that got under my skin, and it added up to a book that didn't make sense and was ultimately unlikable.
What I liked about this book:
The genre? I guess? Although, reading this had made me rethink that decision.
What I didn't like about this book:
Hoo boy, where do I start? The little things really killed this book for me. Writing fiction is all about suspending disbelief. If you're going to throw me into an entirely fictional world of your vision, you have to paint a compelling pictures, keep your world building consistent, and make your characters fit into that world for me to buy it.
Every few pages I ran into some little thing that just pulled me out of the story. The suspension of disbelief never last more than 5 pages, and then I was back at square one. Allow me to list some examples.
1. (My biggest beef with this book) Imagine *Society* has collapsed. 99.9% of all humankind has died from a virus. You probably won't be getting electricity, and you're definitely going to have to fend for yourself. Everybody died quickly, in their homes and in their place of business, from a terrible plague. Where, oh where in the great nation of the United States of America, would you think to settle yourself?
Somewhere with a low population so you don't have to bury too many dead? Somewhere with nice weather, you say? With fertile lands and plentiful hunting grounds? With access to clean water? Why, how sensible of you. Too bad all the remaining humans decided to move to New York City without you. You die!
*Seriously, this bugged me the ENTIRE time I was reading this book. Why would they move to New York City? Why? How does that even make sense? It's never explained***
2. The second major conflict in the book is that humans have not been able to successfully reproduce since the onset of the plague. Babies are carried to term, but become infected with the virus almost immediately after birth and die within days.
In response, the government has mandated that all women 18 and older do their part to conceive as many children as possible (you know, take a run at statistics). How many children is enough for the government, you ask?
Why, little lady, you only have to get pregnant once a year for the rest of your fertile days! That's totally reasonable, right?
This is where it became painfully obvious to me that this story was written by a man. There's just so much wrong with this. Pregnancy is more than just squeezing out a baby. It has to develop for nine months, which literally depletes nutrients from a woman's body. Women who have too frequent pregnancies or pregnancies too close to each other run into a whole host of potential health problems (OB/GYNs generally recommend 18 months between pregnancies, not 3!!! What the heck.)
So this society is on the brink of collapse, and they're willing to risk the health of the entire female population. Yep. Gotcha.
3. The slang in the book killed me. The book begins 15 years after the plague, so there's no TV, no magazines, no internet. Yet Kira described one of her friends as having a 'supermodel flat' stomach. Seriously? Why would Kira be familiar with supermodels?
Etc. etc. etc.
****
This review will be a mile long if I list every little thing that annoyed me, so I'll stop there. The point is, every time I read something totally off kilter, I paused, put the book down for a moment, and said 'What?' I kept getting pulled out of the story, which is the exact opposite of the desired effect. The story needs to pull me in. I found that the little things made it impossible for me to ever get settled in Kira's world.
Final verdict:
Save yourself some heartache and skip this book. If you really need to read about plague survivors, pick up Stephen King's 'The Stand' instead. If you want to read about almost-human clones, grab a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Those are classics for a reason, and 'Partials' doesn't come anywhere near these two.
"I can't believe I read the whole thing."
I try to be balanced on my reviews, but this book made it very difficult. There were a million little things that got under my skin, and it added up to a book that didn't make sense and was ultimately unlikable.
What I liked about this book:
The genre? I guess? Although, reading this had made me rethink that decision.
What I didn't like about this book:
Hoo boy, where do I start? The little things really killed this book for me. Writing fiction is all about suspending disbelief. If you're going to throw me into an entirely fictional world of your vision, you have to paint a compelling pictures, keep your world building consistent, and make your characters fit into that world for me to buy it.
Every few pages I ran into some little thing that just pulled me out of the story. The suspension of disbelief never last more than 5 pages, and then I was back at square one. Allow me to list some examples.
1. (My biggest beef with this book) Imagine *Society* has collapsed. 99.9% of all humankind has died from a virus. You probably won't be getting electricity, and you're definitely going to have to fend for yourself. Everybody died quickly, in their homes and in their place of business, from a terrible plague. Where, oh where in the great nation of the United States of America, would you think to settle yourself?
Somewhere with a low population so you don't have to bury too many dead? Somewhere with nice weather, you say? With fertile lands and plentiful hunting grounds? With access to clean water? Why, how sensible of you. Too bad all the remaining humans decided to move to New York City without you. You die!
*Seriously, this bugged me the ENTIRE time I was reading this book. Why would they move to New York City? Why? How does that even make sense? It's never explained***
2. The second major conflict in the book is that humans have not been able to successfully reproduce since the onset of the plague. Babies are carried to term, but become infected with the virus almost immediately after birth and die within days.
In response, the government has mandated that all women 18 and older do their part to conceive as many children as possible (you know, take a run at statistics). How many children is enough for the government, you ask?
Why, little lady, you only have to get pregnant once a year for the rest of your fertile days! That's totally reasonable, right?
This is where it became painfully obvious to me that this story was written by a man. There's just so much wrong with this. Pregnancy is more than just squeezing out a baby. It has to develop for nine months, which literally depletes nutrients from a woman's body. Women who have too frequent pregnancies or pregnancies too close to each other run into a whole host of potential health problems (OB/GYNs generally recommend 18 months between pregnancies, not 3!!! What the heck.)
So this society is on the brink of collapse, and they're willing to risk the health of the entire female population. Yep. Gotcha.
3. The slang in the book killed me. The book begins 15 years after the plague, so there's no TV, no magazines, no internet. Yet Kira described one of her friends as having a 'supermodel flat' stomach. Seriously? Why would Kira be familiar with supermodels?
Etc. etc. etc.
****
This review will be a mile long if I list every little thing that annoyed me, so I'll stop there. The point is, every time I read something totally off kilter, I paused, put the book down for a moment, and said 'What?' I kept getting pulled out of the story, which is the exact opposite of the desired effect. The story needs to pull me in. I found that the little things made it impossible for me to ever get settled in Kira's world.
Final verdict:
Save yourself some heartache and skip this book. If you really need to read about plague survivors, pick up Stephen King's 'The Stand' instead. If you want to read about almost-human clones, grab a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Those are classics for a reason, and 'Partials' doesn't come anywhere near these two.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
September 13, 2012
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let me start by saying this was a book. your not supost to tke it literally. second the partials chaced them to long island. third the book was baced 11 years after the 'plague'. forth there are people still alive that would know what a supermodle would look like and there would have been magazines still around while she was young at lest. fith do you realy think dan was trying to be sexist. it realy anoys me how people just asume that. sixth no the goverment didnt care about anything but getting babies. seventh if you want to vent about a book that you didnt like dont do it somewhere that the author will ever be able to hear about it. do you like being bullied because thats what i think this whole reveiw is doing. do you have anything elce you think is wrong about this book because i know i can prove that your just picky
I felt your pain with certain areas - use of slang. Despite this, I disagree with your 'obviously written by a man therefore he is clueless' comment. I read it as a system which is in total panic and is therefore ignoring all the 'old' scientific facts from the past in their attempt to keep the human race alive. I felt it added a lot to the story and displays just how catastrophic a situation that the world is in.However, I respect your views. Not everyone is going to love the same books :).
Thanks for the warning. I hate idiocy in books. I'll tolerate it in real life, and sometimes in films, but not in books.
Right on! Perfect review of how I felt about it. There were so many things that didn't fit into the world they lived in. **5 min talking about Nandita's herbs** 1 page dedicated to how the Partials took over the world, saved nuclear reactors etc...
They actually do have magazines. Stuff from the old days didnt disappear like clothes and so
Nickie, with all due respect. It couldn't be clearer that they live on Long Island, not New York City. If you don't like a book, don't like it. But if you're going to criticize it in detail, try to get your facts straight before you do so.
My favorite was when the boat was referred to as a row-boat several times then as a ship. Niiice. I haven't finished the book yet but I think this was sans editor. There's a lot of squishy science. I see nothing that makes it like Hunger Games, Blade Runner, or BSG yet (as advertised).
Also, try reading further. All the books make a perfect sense once you've finished reading them. The whole picture is told from Kira's point of view, don't forget, so the 99,9 % is what she thinks. I heavily recommend reading whole before criticizing the book, and yes, the facts could be more accurate in your comment :)
Hunger games btw doesn't even come near this book. Hunger games was such a child bullshit. Sorry :D
I respect the author's viewpoint, but for others reading her comment, I wanted to refute what she says about the pregnancy part of the story. In fact, much of the drama is driven by what a big deal it is that women must become pregnant. Our main character's terror of being forced to be pregnant drives her actions. A splinter cell of terrorists, who turn out to be decent people, leave society because they feel their government is doing something evil in forcing women to be pregnant. It's not a little, nor a downplayed, part of the story, but instead a grotesque and totalitarian law that our heroes debate and ultimate decide to fight.
Thanks for the warning Nickie.