Title: Fragments
Author: Dan Wells
Publisher/Year: Harper Collins 3/11/14
Length: 592 Pages
Series: Partials #2
Overview
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?
The second installment in the pulse-pounding Partials saga is the story of the eleventh hour of humanity’s time on Earth, a journey deep into places unknown to discover the means—and even more important, a reason—for our survival.
My Thoughts
Just when you think that things couldn’t get any more complicated and interesting, they do. It’s not only the continuation of the story with Kira and Samm, but there’s so much layered onto things that makes it for a really exciting read.
When we left off, you’ll remember that Kira had managed to find a cure that saved Madison’s baby – but that’s really the only one that they’ve been able to save. There’s no means to replicate the cure yet. From that point, things in East Meadow turned upside down. Members of the Senate were thrown out, members of the Voice were brought in, and it was really now just the Humans v. the Partials. But things are never that clear right?
After more plotting and planning, Kira decides that she needs to find more information about ParaGen and what happened. After finding a message from Nandita on a picture of her, Nandita and her father taken outside of ParaGen with the words ‘find the trust’ written on it, Kira knows that there’s something bigger for her to discover. Fragments takes us on the cross country journey of Kira, Samm, Heron and Afa – and it’s wrought with fear, tension and a story of trying to find out exactly what was planned, by whom and what did others do that no one knew about.
While all this is going on though, Marcus (Kira’s boyfriend) is still in Long Island trying to find a way to get the answers, Haru is there as well, figuring out which side to be on, yet not trusting either, and we see additional plans unfold.
During Kira’s journey into NYC – she discovered Afa in a building and learns that he was the IT director of ParaGen, has most of the records from the servers and is a genius in the sense that he can decode any computer system, but the 12 years alone and the radiation from his power sources have left him a bit unstable. While Kira decides that he’s necessary to make the journey across the country, Heron isn’t so sure – and this is where my curiosity on her motives really begins to form.
We know that she’s in it because Samm is, but i still don’t trust her.
The trek across the country takes them on a geography lessons of sorts – and I have to say that Mr Wells sure did his studying to find cities that could be placed in the necessary locations for this. It’s also interesting to see that there’s some logic and science to how the country has decomposed over the past decade.
Where the story gets really good is not in Chicago where it becomes a game changer, but in the Rockies – and I really have to keep myself from getting too far ahead of things. Suffice it to say, ParaGen holds a lot of answers, but there are still even more answers back in Long Island that everyone needs to get to, and i guess it’ll be in book 3 to find out.
The question now is – who’s a pratial and who’s not – who has the failsafe and who doesn’t and who will trigger the latest failafe? Is there a cure – and who’s going to come up with it. Of the Trust – who’s still alive and who’s on which side? will people ever learn that survival is directly linked to both humans and partials?
Honestly, i like dystopia a lot – clearly – but what i really like about this series so far is that it’s so techy – it’s so scientific. that’s what gets me interested sometimes – really seeing the thought and science behind things – and understanding what caused the world to end v. just learning that it has. we get that sometimes in other series like this – but in Partials – we really begin to understand why everything came to be. I’m looking forward to book 3 – i’ve got it downloaded – so we’ll see where it takes me. I’m curious to see who survives, and who ends up with whom – with what baby and where in the country they live.