Review: Partials by Dan Wells

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. (GoodReads)

Partials by Dan Wells takes readers on a pulsepounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question—one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival.

First things first. When I went to Google "partials" in order to add an image of the book cover to this post, I ended up with a lot of images of teeth. No seriously. Go ahead and try it. You will likely find this gentlemen who now has a dazzling smile thanks to these partial mandible implant/dentures:

Yay for him.

Next, I'm probably going to get hammered for this, but I was not a fan of this book. It was slooooooow and it was set in Long Isssssland (East Meadow to be exact, and since my dad was born and raised there, I am allowed to act judgy in this post). Not to mention, aside from being generally ridiculous (a camel in an abandoned mansion? Huh? How is this relevant?) this story was all about saving the human race (yawn) and there was no young adult romance! Boo!

• Orginality: 7 - okay, I'll give credit where credit is due, the premise is orginal. So I guess you could say what it lacks in pace, it makes up for in the unique idea that there are No. More. Babies! Boo.
• Absurdity:  7 - Dan Wells really stuck to his science fiction/dystopian angle and never wavered. You guys. I record the Kardashians on my DVR. I cannot survive on SciFi alone! That being said, if I ever lived in a society where the government told me I had to have a baby, every year starting from age 16 (yeah, I know), hmmm, I'd quit that fast!
• Level of Paranormal Romance: -5; So it seemed like at times that Mr. Wells was setting this up to have a romantic love triangle or googly eyed love affair. But as soon as you had a glimmer of hope that there would be some innocent hand-holding, I don't know, the whole "all the babies are dying, oh man!" thing took over and put the kibosh on it.
• Level of Harry Potterness: 3 - I can sum this up briefly (unlike the book): it was verbose to a fault. 

Okay, so now I want to know: what are your thoughts on this book?
(PS Grad Student liked this book a whole lot. See her review for another POV)