Title: Fragments
Author: Dan Wells
Source: library
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Review Summary: I still loved the writing and the characters, but the plot suffered from some serious middle-of-a-trilogy lag.
In the first book of this series, Kira discovered that a race of manufactured super humans called the Partials contain the cure to the disease that has been ravaging the human race. Unfortunately, the Partials are facing their own imminent demise, fueling suspicion and prejudices that are pushing humans and Partials closer to another war. In order to bring the sides together, Kira needs to learn more about why they were designed the way they are. She also desperately wants to know what her unique blend of human and partial characteristics make her.
As I expected based on Partials, Fragments was very well written. Kira was still a strong, likable protagonist who cares about other people but is willing to do what she has to do. The world building also remained superbly done, with new information revealed in believable conversations or through things the characters see. Lots of new information came to light, but there were no information dumps here. Sadly, the book itself was mostly about discovering new information.
In a way, this focus was good because the other book did leave me desperately wanting to learn more. But it was also bad, because there was so little action. At the beginning, the pace was fairly quick and I was optimistic that Fragments would be as action-packed as the first book. Instead, Kira ends up setting out on a very long cross country journey to get information off of some computers (apocalypse = no internet). At first, I enjoyed the survival aspects and the surreal-ness of their journey. As the trip dragged on, however, this began to feel like an excuse to stretch out the book without telling us anything. This meant at the end, I had very high expectations. I’d been waiting a long time for this! When most of the information revealed was somewhat predictable, it felt anticlimactic and left me wishing this book had advanced the plot a lot more.
