Title: Ruins Series: Partials Sequence #3
Author: Dan Wells
Published: March 11, 2014
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Page Count: 464
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Kira, Samm, and Marcus fight to prevent a final war between Partials and humans in the gripping final installment in the Partials Sequence, a series that combines the thrilling action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Blade Runner and The Stand.
There is no avoiding it—the war to decide the fate of both humans and Partials is at hand. Both sides hold in their possession a weapon that could destroy the other, and Kira Walker has precious little time to prevent that from happening. She has one chance to save both species and the world with them, but it will only come at great personal cost.
This is yet another trilogy with a disappointing third installment. In spite of its great potential, Ruins fell flat in every way. I was bored throughout, and characters, writing, and plot failed to inspire my interest. Dan Wells definitely could have done better.
Firstly, at this point, I’m really not a fan of Wells’ protagonist, Kira. She is a complete Mary Sue. I have no interest in her or her “problems.” Over the course of this series she ends up curing not one but two incurable diseases that have stumped the world’s most elite scientists for years. Also she has a very dull and lifeless love triangle that I care nothing about. Bleh.
The plot also suffered, mostly due to shabby pacing. Ruins has multiple perspectives, and all the pagespace it took to cycle through all those characters made the story progress in a stilted, choppy fashion that did nothing for heightening tension or capturing my attention.
Beyond plot technicalities, the storyline itself was so obvious and lackluster. I really didn’t care about the great human versus Partial battle that was supposedly going down. Partly because it wasn’t staged in a way that made me care, and also because there actually wasn’t all that much battling going down. It was just the threat of battle. And really, who seriously finds 300 pages of threats to be engaging material? Not I.
I really feel like Wells could have done something more with Ruins. It was so unimaginitive and lifeless that there’s really nothing to recommend it. If the first book in the trilogy had been like this, I most assuredly would not have stuck around. Ruins is spectacularly underwhelming on every point. That’s really all there is to say.
