 Hello there, and today I'm here to talk about a series called Partials. Now, I talked a little bit about this one a while ago, or at least the first book in the series, and how it was not as bad as I expected it to be. Oh, thank god I'm not too late. James, I'm here to help you. Oh, okay, are we doing that thing where we start off the video with a 10-minute skit about how I had to travel back in time to stop myself from playing a bad video game or Oh no, not at all. In fact, I'm actually here to help you review it because this is just... I mean, it's terrible. No, actually, I quite liked the series overall. What? No, no, no, no. You can't like this series, okay? It's a dystopian young adult novel. All you're allowed to do is talk about how it's stupid and doesn't make any sense, and it's clearly just aimed at teenage girls, but maybe you could throw in some tangent at the end about how it was all a product of its time or something to cut it some slack. Well, yeah, I'll admit I'm no longer in the target audience for it, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good entry when it comes around, and that also doesn't mean that I can't criticize bad ones when I find them. No, no, no, no. You can't do that. You have to complain about how it's being woke or whatever. I mean, the main character has a vagina, and she's not even white. She's Indian. What? And then we have to talk about how political and obnoxious it's being. I mean, the whole message of the book is how not to be racist, like, oh, wow, pat yourself on the back, author. This conversation went in a direction that I was not anticipating. Yes, okay, this is why we need two of us. So are you ready or not? Okay, you know what? I'm gonna review partials in a minute. I'll be right back. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So as I was saying before I was interrupted, I've talked about partials before. It is a solid series. It's enjoyable. It's not groundbreaking, no, but I liked it. I liked the first book, and I wound up liking the second and third ones as well. It's definitely a dystopian young adult novel, kind of in the, maybe not the exact same as a lot of the Hunger Games and its clones, but definitely in that same ballpark and aimed at that same audience. But overall it is a solid series, you know? It has good characters. It has a good story. It doesn't quite stick the landing at the end. Like we'll talk about that later. I think the ending is not the best, not the best, but I've really read so much worse in my day. So for those who didn't see me talk about the first book, it is about a world where humans, like 50 years in the future, they created some artificial humans to work as soldiers and, well, basically slaves. You know, kind of like replicants in Blade Runner, if you've ever seen those. Like they created a sentient artificial race of humans, and they called them partials. And then at some point the partials rebelled, and they fought against the humans, and then they released this virus, which they just call RM, and that killed the vast, vast majority of the human population. So now there's only about 30,000 left that, at least 30,000 left that they know of, and they all live on Long Island in New York. 12 years after the world ended, all the humans who are immune to RM are trying to rebuild their population, but they're incapable of doing so, because for whatever reason, them being immune does not carry on to their children. So when they have babies, the babies will die within a couple of days of RM. So it's pretty unpleasant. Like the very beginning of the first book is talking about how, hey, a baby died today, and it's actually kind of depressing. Enter the main character, a teenage girl named Kira, who is seeking out a cure for RM, because she's trained as a medical technician, or nurse, or doctor, or whatever. They all kind of blend together in this world, but she has medical training and she thinks she can find a cure for RM, but she has to get a partial in order to compare its physiology to human physiology. And then from there, the story unfolds. Now I'll say right now, the setup for this is great. Like it's not just there's an evil government and you have to destroy it, like a lot of its genre contemporaries, although there is some elements of that. The human government on Long Island is pretty unpleasant, pretty nasty at times, but you kind of see where they're coming from at the same time. Like you understand, like, okay, yeah, it's when you have the extinction of humanity on one hand and freedom on the other, it's easy to give up freedom in order to make sure humans don't go extinct. So you kind of see where they're coming from while they're still an evil government. And we also see that not only has the world mostly ended, the world is still continuing to end. You know, like most of these dystopian stories took place in a post-apocalyptic world, yes, but they were a long time after the apocalypse kind of after things had already settled down, and it was more about the systems that popped up after the apocalypse happened, rather than the apocalypse itself. Whereas Partials is more about the apocalypse itself and how the characters deal with that. And like I said, it's not afraid to show us the stakes. Like, very first page of the first book is, hey, an infant just died and there was nothing you could do to save it. Don't you feel bad about yourself and a bunch of other babies die over the course of this series too. It's really depressing. And also grown characters get shot and killed in various ways as well. Like it's not afraid to show us the stakes, basically. Like humanity is fighting against extinction, not only against the Partials who are an overwhelmingly powerful force, but against this virus, which they just can't do anything about. And boy, that feels familiar. I mean, there's not a vaccine for RM that people are refusing to take, but still. The first book, like a really big chunk of it, is devoted to science stuff. Like, you know, Kira captures a Partial pretty early on. That's a minor spoiler because it actually does take a little while into the book before that happens, but it's very difficult to talk about the rest of it without going into that. So she captures a Partial named Sam, Sam with two M's, by the way. And a big chunk of the book is her doing science stuff with him trying to find a cure. And there's less action than you might think based on the setup. And for some people, that might be a turnoff. For me personally, it wasn't a big deal because I was into the science stuff. It was never like too technical or too confusing and you know, it never really felt like a Michael Crichton novel or anything like that. Not that Michael Crichton novels are bad, just it never went to that level. And like I said, I was into the characters like Kira and Sam and I knew what the stakes were. So it really didn't bother me, but I do definitely understand if someone else would go into it thinking there'd be more explosions and stuff and then being a little disappointed when they didn't get that. I also really liked how Sam and Kira were not instantly in love with each other. Like I know again, that sounds like a spoiler, but it's pretty blatant. The obvious just based on the setup and what kind of book it is that the two of them will fall in love at some point. But it's not instant. They have to really get to know each other and they have to spend time doing it, not just in the first book, but over the second and third ones as well. So that was one thing I really liked about it. And they're both decent characters on their own as well because Kira is, again, she has watched her world just slowly die and fade away. And now her family is in danger because one of her sisters is pregnant. And Kira is thinking, I do not want my niece or nephew to die of this. So I need to find a cure for it. And that is basically the human face of her trying to find a cure as opposed to just, oh, faceless anonymous people are dying of it. Like, no, we have characters that we actually kind of care about here. And then Sam is also unsure of his... He's a good character because he's unsure of his place in the world, I suppose, because as a partial, he was created for war. And then after the war, humans tried getting rid of them and he didn't like that. So he joined the rebellion. And now after the rebellion, some other stuff is going down that I won't go into too much detail on. And he's just... He's not sure what to do with himself and watching him slowly, I guess become a better person is one way of putting it, but just watching him slowly evolve and realize who he is and who he wants to be and try to become that person is really, really good. In fact, I'll say that all the major characters in this are defined. You know, they have motives beyond just I want to survive or I want power or something. You know, there's characters who want to make the world a better place, actually. I think that describes all of them to a T. They have different ways of wanting to make the world a better place and they have different ideas of what the world being a better place would look like, but they all want to make the world a better place. And so that makes them all pretty understandable and relatable in a way. In fact, Kira has to ask herself at several points, like how far is she willing to go to find a cure for RM and how far is she willing to go to reach her other goals and get what she wants? And it turns out the answer is pretty far, but like, is she willing to do bad things in order to get a good outcome is a question that's asked a lot and other characters as well. Like, it never gets super morally gray, but it is still interesting. And one other thing I'd like to say about Kira is that while, yes, she does fight a little bit and she does do some like badass heroine stuff like Katniss or whatever, she does some of that, but not a lot. Like, she's not really defined by being a good fighter. She just is smart in a couple of situations and manages to help people out in battles and stuff. Like, she's, she's, I guess, not a badass, but at the same time she is. I don't really know how to explain it beyond that, but I did like that aspect of her. It helped her be a little different while still being an engaging character. So without going into detail, by the end of the first book, some progress has been made, but the conflicts are all still there and basically it ends on a note of, okay, well, we still have to go and do some more work in order to cure the virus and make sure humanity doesn't go extinct and also the partials maybe. Now the second book follows a post-apocalyptic journey across the country because Sam and Kira and some others found a lead that they may be able to cure the virus if they go to this place and take a while, guess where it is? They have to go to Denver. You know, when I made that video about Hunger Games Clones, I had a section about how the characters have to go to Denver at some point and that wasn't meant to be serious. Like that was meant to be just a cheeky joke about how I've noticed it happens a lot, but it seriously happens in every series of this nature. It is extremely odd to me but I think you get the idea. You know, they go across the country on a really big dangerous journey. You've probably seen stories like that before. Something I did really appreciate about it is how Sam and Kira were together for most of this book because think about it, in a lot of romance-focused stories, especially young adult ones for some reason, the main couple doesn't actually spend a lot of time together. Like the worst example of this I can think of is Fallen where the two leads were together a little bit in the first book when they first met or sort of first met because I'm not getting into detail on Fallen. That's a weird series. And then they were not together at all in the second book, not together at all in the third book. Barely talked to each other in the last one and then so we didn't really get a chance to see them not only become a couple but to like be a couple and be around one another which is kind of the point of romance stories. So I just like how Sam and Kira were actually together for a big chunk of this middle book and then the third one as well. Like they're actually, you know, they spend time together. That's what made it nice. And then because this is the second part of a trilogy more stuff is revealed, things get worse, ends on a cliffhanger, etc. And nothing that really unusual for the second entry in a trilogy I don't think. Although I will bring up a problem how some of the things it reveals about partials are weird and it makes them work a little bit less as a part of the setting. So for starters, they all communicate using pheromones. Like, you know, obviously they're humans so they talk and everything but whenever they feel emotions like fear or anger or sadness or anything, they involuntarily release pheromones which other partials can pick up on and so they know what they're feeling. And for example, if one of them dies then they release a bunch of death pheromones so others will know like there's danger over there. Let's be careful. Which is kind of neat actually and in fact, that's the reason why partials seem so robotic and emotionless to humans is because they don't really need to showcase their emotions through their expressions or their words or anything because, well, other partials already know how they're feeling. And so that's part of the conflict is that humans think they're these unfeeling robots and they're really not. So I did think that was neat. But it's also, we get to see partials work as soldiers and as warriors on a large scale for the first time in this book. And they're just too perfect. Like they're too good at it. You know, like they can see someone across the street aiming a gun at them and then when they fire they're able to dodge the bullet not because they can, they're so fast they can dodge bullets but so fast that they can see where the barrel is pointing and they can move out of the way before they even pull the trigger and it's, what? Like we see this whole battle where partials are shooting at each other and they're just dodging each other's bullets like that. And that's just one example of how they're honestly just too perfect as warriors. And so we know from that moment that there's no way humans are going to be able to defeat them militarily. They're going to have to come up with some bullshit excuse for getting rid of the villain's powers, even though the partials as a whole are not precisely villains in this series, but, you know, close enough. And so I didn't like that. That was really stupid. It was, I hate that I always have to keep going back to this, but it was very similar to Reaper's Creek, that Onision book where the main villains were literal gods and they were just too powerful. So how do we get the main character to defeat them? We just make him also a god except he's better. Things like that. It's just dumb. And then we get to the third entry in the trilogy where they finally find the cure and then they have to take down the war hawks who, on both sides, the humans and the partials who still want to fight and destroy and kill each other because they don't see a better way and then they have to make peace. And it's a good entry in the series. I think it's a good finale, except for some subplots there that really, really should be bigger. Like the first one is how the climate is getting fixed because this is like 50 or 60 years in the future. So the climate is, you know, it's fucked. It's like much worse than it is in our time. Like it's mentioned in the third book that Kira doesn't even know what snow is. Like she's never seen it before. And keep in mind, she lives in New York. Like there's supposed to be snow there. It is a little weird how she doesn't know what it is because you'd think someone would have at least mentioned it before. And in fact, in the first two books, they don't even mention how the climate is bad. So they just, okay, whatever, whatever. The point is, it's slowly getting fixed. And then we see this one character who's like this mutated scientist dude who, we learned nothing about him other than that he spent all the time since the apocalypse somehow fixing the environment. And then he goes around warning people like, hey, things are gonna get cold again. So like there's gonna be snow, winter's almost here. You best prepare yourselves. And it kind of just comes out of nowhere if I'm being honest. And then the resolution to it is also just comes out of nowhere. Like I think this subplot would have been fine if it had been hinted at a little bit earlier. Like maybe if in the first two books, some characters noticed how, hey, it's getting colder. I'm maybe the planet is just healing itself after the apocalypse. Maybe there's a silver lining till so many humans dying. Like they could literally just have a brief conversation like that and it would be fine. But it was odd. And then the other subplot, which I'm not going to give away a lot of, is Kira's father. Because in the first book it's mentioned how they're pretty certain that he died, but she just got separated from him when the world ended and no one's seen him since. And just based on that, and the fact that he was a scientist who kind of sort of helped create the partials, it's pretty obvious that he'll come back in some form in the series at some point. And he does, but then it's just really quick. And then he's gone again. And I don't think it actually led anywhere. Like I'll go into more detail in the spoiler section. And I know that was a minor spoiler there, but for real, the subplot regarding Kira's father was not good. And the climax is over really fast. You know, there's not a real villain there that represents the problem. Like I get that the villain of the series is meant to be like humanities, inability to get along with other groups of humanity. Because I mean, the partials are technically not humans, but you know, they're a metaphor for different groups of humans. And like there's no representative of that, is what I'm saying. Like usually even in stories where the villain is like society or nature or whatever, they have some representative of that. Like maybe if we had a general on the partial side and a general on the human side who just refused to see Pete to do, yeah, refuse to make peace at any, under any circumstances, then maybe this could work a little better. And we do kind of have that, but it's just really half-assed. And then, so we just don't have a proper villain for the series, I don't think. And then the climax is over really fast. And so it's just, I don't know. It like, I feel that if you're going to have an exciting climax, go all out on it. You know, be big, be exciting, have battles and gunfights and explosions and knife battles and sword fights and all that. Or just have a more subdued one where the main character like gives a speech or whatever and convinces everyone to put down their weapons. Like those can both work if you do them well, but this one feels like it was trying to be halfway between the two. And so it just comes across as kind of half-assed. And I didn't like it. Overall a good series. It just, you know, it has some issues in the story. And I will also say that the prose is just odd. You know, like, there's too little description of the characters. Like I mentioned in the first review that for a big chunk of the first book, I didn't know that Kira was supposed to be Indian. Like, I mean, it's not mentioned until like a third of the way through. Like she doesn't get a proper description. And also the cover just makes her look like kind of a basic white girl. So I just didn't think about it. And I mean, obviously it's not a problem that she's Indian. It just, I wish that it had mentioned it. But at the same time, the characters are way too verbose when they talk. Like just listen to this example. That's better. This is the end. Maybe not of your war. They look to still have some fight left in them. But of the war's importance, I have all the DNA I need now. The humans and partials so desperate to end each other's existence can now do so without harming our future. It doesn't have to be that way. It's your plan. The one that you made all those years ago. It can still happen. For the moment, perhaps. But eventually they'll start fighting again. They'll blame each other for your death. For not saving you or killing me. Who talks like this? You know, it'd be one thing if there were one or two characters who talked like that because that would just be, you know, their personality. But seriously, every character in the series talks like that. And there's a lot of them. Like they just use too many fancy five dollar words, I guess you'd say. And at the same time, they just spend way too much time making their points. So I found myself at a couple of points reading through big chunks of dialogue just going, Jesus, get to the point, man. So that was really obnoxious. But overall, like I said, good solid series. Enjoyable enough. Not groundbreaking. Not the most amazing thing I ever read. But you know what, if you're looking for something that's kind of in this vein, then go ahead and check it out. You could do a million times worse. In fact, I did mention before in my like Steven Seagal video that I, my next big long book series review is the testing trilogy, which I do have here. Like, I'm gonna get started on that soon, don't worry. It'll be a while before it's out, but I am probably getting started on it soon at least. And it's nice to just once in a while be reminded that every genre has good and bad entries. You know, the dystopian teen young adult craze had a lot of bad stuff in it, but there were some good ones. And Partials was one of those. So I guess now let's go to the spoiler section. This is not me, y'all. I'm fighting for my f***ing life. Y'all, tell me. All right, so I have like two really big things to talk about in the spoilers section. First, we learned that the cure for the RM virus is for its partial breath. You know, the Partials just have to be near humans, and then they'll release their pheromones and it'll attach to the virus and make it inert. And so that's the cure for it. The humans just have to be around Partials. But at the same time, we learned that Partials are dying as well. Like they all have a built-in expiration date. So 20 minutes, or not 20 minutes, 20 years after they're born, they'll hit that expiration date and then they'll just rapidly age like 100 years over the course of a couple of weeks and then they'll disintegrate and die. And the Partials are coming up on that expiration date. Like a lot of them have already died of it by the time the series begins. And we also learned in the third book that the cure for that is the inert virus. So basically the Partials make the RM virus inert and then the humans will like breathe that back out and then the Partials absorb that or whatever, and that makes them stop aging. So basically the humans and the Partials are the cure for the other's ailments. So they have to learn to live together, which actually that does raise one question, are the Partials immortal now? Like do they just stop aging altogether? Because the thing is, they don't age normally. They're born out of a pod and they're physically 20-ish years old and then they stay looking that same age until they reach their expiration date and then they die really quickly. So with the expiration date out of the picture, do they just not age? Are they immortal now? I think they are, but I do wish that the book had at least touched upon that. And I will say that this is a realistic end to the conflict, like both sides learn they have to work together. It's not just okay, genocide, the bad people. Like I get it, I get it. It is a realistic end to the conflict, but it is kind of lame. I'm not gonna lie it. It's pretty lame that basically the message of this is let's all hold hands and get along and then we'll all be fine. It'll solve all of our problems right away. I did think that was stupid. Like as of this recording, Sarah Z just recently put out a video on the rise and fall of YA dystopias and actually you should watch it because it's really good and really in-depth. I don't agree with everything she says in there. I think there's a few bits she could have gone more in-depth than a few bits where she didn't really need to go as far in-depth but whatever, not important. It's a good video, you should watch it. And she basically mentions in that that social issues usually are not fixed by this one person going off and killing the evil president or whatever and then the rebellion takes over and everything is great again. Like that's usually not how it works and she's right. She's right. So in this way, Partials does set itself aside from the rest of its genre contemporaries or not all of them, but a lot of them. But I mean just being realistic doesn't always mean you're good. And then second, the second big spoiler thing I want to talk about is how there was this group within the company that made the Partials, which called themselves The Trust. They were a secret group of people who wanted to make sure that the Partials were not mistreated and they also included Armin, who was Kira's father. Oh yeah, also we learned that Kira is basically just a modified Partial, you know, one that actually ages and stuff. And it doesn't affect the series as much as you might think but that's still a big spoiler so I didn't mention it. And basically they are the ones who made the RM Virus and they're the ones who put in the expiration date in the Partials in order to force humans in Partials to get along and work together. Because as we learn pretty quickly in the third book, as soon as Partials learn how to stop their expiration, they just immediately decide, okay, we'll just put a couple of humans into concentration camps and kill all the rest and we'll do that. Like I mean obviously not all the Partials are on board with that but some of the worst of them are. So The Trust basically just was trying to force them to be together and not kill each other. And well obviously her father is still alive as I said earlier and then he just shows up in the third book and he's going around and he's killing people. He's taking DNA both from Partials and from humans and he has an army of like modified Partials who he can control as well, which sounds kind of cool but they don't really do anything with it. And he says he's going to make a new race of people who will inherit the earth after both of these other ones die out and then he shows up at the end and they have a brief conversation and then he has a quick fight with a character and then he dies and well that's kind of it. And at the same time while all this is going on the humans did manage to sneak a nuclear weapon into the Partials home base and blow it up and kill most of them but at the same time the radiation was spreading so it was destroying their hometown as well so the few surviving humans and Partials have to migrate somewhere safer together. And I mean I kind of get what they're going with that like both of their homes are destroyed and they realize how much they have in common so that's why they're learning to work together but still it does feel a little cheesy a little Saturday morning cartoon-y like you can see why I disliked the ending now but it's really not terrible you know there weren't any massive holes that I found it didn't get stupidly dark or stupidly light-hearted out of nowhere well it kind of got stupidly light-hearted out of nowhere but the series was hinting towards that for a while so it's not the end of the world and you know even if the ending was really bad everything leading up to it was still really solid so even if you heard that spoilery bit at the end I would still recommend checking this series out if it sounds like something that interests you because post-apocalyptic stuff has always fascinated me and if you're in that same category then I think you'll like Partials a huge thanks to everyone who bothered to watch this far for whatever reason I don't know who would want to listen to me talk for half an hour but especially a huge thanks to all my patrons whose names are on here including the ten dollar and up patrons Oppo Savilainen Olivia Rayan Brother Santotys Buffy Valentine Carolina Clay Christopher Quinten Dan Anceliovic Echo Joel Carcat Kitsune Liza Rudikova Lord Tiebreaker Madison Lewis Bennett Marilyn Roxy Microphone Sad Mardigan Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie and of course as always Vei Victis y'all are the best really let me let me tell you that like if you were here I I'd kiss you I wouldn't actually kiss you but you know you're you're all pretty cool anyways so uh just don't don't take my just um okay yeah goodbye