Bluescreen

by Dan Wells
335 pgs  (Mirador series #1)

In the year 2050, everyone is constantly connected to the Internet via their djinni, a smart device implanted directly in their head. The djinni serves as a communication device, computer, GPS, house key, bankcard, and a host of other functions all at once. People are able to plug devices and drives directly into their djinni and download new software, games, and anything else they want 24/7. Marisa and her friends Anja, Sahara, Fang, and Java, who call themselves the Cherry Dogs, spend most of their time immersed in virtual-reality games and plan to eventually become professional "Overworld" players.

One day, Anja buys a new "plug-in" on the street called Bluescreen and brings it back to the Cherry Dogs to try. It's supposed to have a drug-like effect on users, but when Anja takes it, her behavior is alarming. She behaves as if she's in a trance for a period before eventually losing consciousness. Marisa and the group start investigating who's behind Bluescreen and what it's intended to do to those who use it, but their investigation puts their lives in danger.

Bluescreen is a smart, tech-savvy science-fiction thriller that was written for a slightly younger audience, but it should appeal to anyone who enjoys the genre. It's the start of a series that has two follow-up books already out.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Over Your Dead Body

by Dan Wells
303 pgs  (John Wayne Cleaver series #5)

In The Devil's Only Friend young John Wayne Cleaver tried working as a special consultant to the FBI. His unique abilities were used by a special team of agents to hunt down and destroy the Withered, demons who take possession of a human body and kill with very little chance of ever being discovered. As the book concludes, and things go horribly wrong with an operation, John decides he's better off hunting down the remaining Withered with only the help of Brooke, who is psychologically broken and possessed by the demon known as Nobody..

As Over Your Dead Body begins, John and Brooke have been hitchhiking across the country, hunting the Withered and hiding from the authorities. Their arrive in a small town in Oklahoma, where they believe an ancient Withered has been hiding out unnoticed for decades. But shortly after they arrive in town the murders begin. It seems as if their arrival has caused the demon to begin killing again, and neither John nor Brooke has any idea why.
They know that they need to quickly identify who the Withered is, and stop it from killing anyone else.

This series gets better with each installment. When I started reading the first book, I am Not a Serial Killer, I thought Wells was just a fan of Dexter and decided to put his own spin on the idea. But about halfway through, the book took an unexpected turn towards the supernatural. And while Lindsay's Dexter series eventually got stale--to say nothing about what happened to the TV series--Wells's series has so far maintained its uniqueness, and with each book, Wells's writing talents have become more apparent. I get increasingly more eager for each new book.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Devil's Only Friend

by Dan Wells
304 pgs  (John Wayne Cleaver series #4)

When I finished reading I Don't Want to Kill You, I figured that was the last time I'd read about John Wayne Cleaver--a teenager who had all of the inclinations and desires to become a serial killer, but who kept himself in check with his self-imposed set of rules--and I was okay with that. I liked the way the trilogy ended, and I was content moving on. When I found out Dan Wells was going to write another three books, I was both excited and leery. Excited because I really enjoyed the first three books, but leery because I didn't want him to mess around with something that I felt was complete.

The Devil's Only Friend picks up a short while after IDWTKY ends. John now works for a special FBI task force that hunts down and kills the Withered. The Withered took away the only two things that he cared about in the last book; his mother and his girlfriend, and now John uses his unique set of skills and instincts to identify them, hunt them down, and then kill them. But John would rather work alone, he's not comfortable working with the other members of the team, some of whom know a little bit about his past, but none of whom know about the internal monster he's constantly trying to keep at bay.

Overall I enjoyed this latest book, and I'm looking forward to the next two. It's not the strongest book in the series, but I'd definitely recommend it to everyone who read the first three. It'll be interesting to see where Wells takes the series from here.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Ruins

by Dan Wells
451 pgs  (The Partials series #3)

I finally got around to finishing Dan Wells's The Partials series. I know a lot of people who have read it have compared it to The Hunger Games and Divergent books because they're all written primarily for a younger audience, have a young female heroine, and take place in a bleak dystopian future. While I haven't read either of those series, I'm familiar enough with them to understand the comparison. Wells's books haven't gained anywhere near the following and popularity that the others have and having finished it, and unfortunately I understand why. It's a smart series, and it starts off with a strong first book - Partials, but the books tended to drag on in multiple places and by the end, my interest level had waned.

In Ruins Kira is trying to prevent another, and most likely race-ending war between what's left of mankind and Partials--the species of genetically engineered men and women with far superior physical and mental abilities. Both species are already near extinction; the Partials because they have an internal expiration date that they die when they reach, and the humans because of a genetically engineered disease that was released years ago and has caused every child born after it was released to die within days of birth.

Not only does Kira have to somehow prevent war between the two species, she also must somehow convince them that each species contains the cure for the other. And that the only way either of them will survive, is if they can somehow find a way to live in constant contact with each other.

I'm a huge fan of Wells's other series featuring the "Dexter-esque" John Wayne Cleaver and was excited to learn that he's continuing the series with The Devil's Only Friend later this year. But this series ended up being a disappointment. I'll recommend it to my teenage daughters and see what they think. Maybe I just wasn't in his targeted demographic this time.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Hollow City

by Dan Wells
333 pgs

The FBI are hunting a serial killer, a man known as the Redline Killer who, over the past two weeks has killed several people and removed their faces.

Michael Shipman is a twenty-year old paranoid schizophrenic who hears voices, sees faceless men, and who has a mortal fear of anything electronic. He believes that the faceless men are monitoring his thoughts and every movement through an implant in his brain that transmits his thoughts and his location through cell phones, and anything electronic.

When the story begins, Michael finds himself in a mental institution. He doesn't know how he got there nor can he remember the past two weeks of his life. He hadn't been taking his medications, and the FBI are interested in talking to him. It's a fantastic premise for a story.

Dan Wells has once again shown why he is one of the best at getting into your brain and messing around with it. He tells the story from the perspective of Michael and he masterfully uses Michael's schizophrenia to keep you guessing who and what in the book are real, and what are just the delusions of an unbalanced mind.

I loved his John Wayne Cleaver books and The Hollow City is another good one that I'll be recommending to many.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Fragments

by Dan Wells
564 pgs  (The Partials series #2)

Dan Wells ended Partials with Kira successfully stealing a dose of the cure for RM, the genetically engineered disease that had killed 99% of the people on earth, along with every baby born since it was released 12 years ago. But along with finding a cure, she also discovered something about herself: she is a Partial.

Now her quest for answers has taken on even more meaning. Raised believing she was a human, she cares deeply about the fate of the human race and believes it's up to her to discover the secrets behind RM's cure so that it can be replicated. Knowing now that she's a Partial herself, she also needs to figure out whether the expiration date genetically encoded into the Partials' DNA which kills them at the age of twenty can be turned off. She believes she can discover the answers to her own origin as well as the keys to saving both races at ParaGen's headquarters.

Her journey, which takes her to Lower Manhattan and then across the toxic, post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Midwest, all the way to Denver, is where this book really shines. Wells's strength is in describing the conditions of the cities and country following the devastation of the ongoing war against the Partials. Where he doesn't shine is in his pacing. The book is fairly long, especially for one written primarily for younger readers. Wells alternates back and forth between following Kira's journey west and providing updates on what's happening with those she left behind, who are still fighting the Partials and trying to replicate the cure. The latter story arc got a little tedious and seemed unnecessary to the story. Nothing significant took place back in New York, and every time Wells switched to that story arc, I tended to lose interest in the story.

Overall it's a good book and serves the purpose of the middle book in a trilogy: it gets you ready for its conclusion.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Partials

by Dan Wells
(The Partials series #1)

Dan Wells is the author of the John Wayne Cleaver trilogy consisting of I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don't Want to Kill You. If there's a series of books with more intriguing titles, I'm unaware of it. I enjoyed those books a lot and so I was looking forward to whatever he wrote next. When I found out it was a sci-fi book for young adults, it didn't dampen my enthusiasm. I've read a lot of really good books that were written for younger readers. But when I saw the cover of the book, I hesitated. It looked like a lot of the books my 13-year-old daughter reads and I didn't want to appear too creepy reading on the train to and from work each day. So I took the book cover off while reading it.

The book takes place 60 or so years into the future. In a time when there are less than 100,000 people left on earth. During a war with the Partials--genetically engineered beings almost indistinguishable from humans but stronger and with heightened senses, a weaponized virus known as RM was released that killed over 99% of the population and has continued to kill every baby born since then. The youngest people on earth are now teenagers and everyone lives under the constant threat of another attack by the Partials.

Kira is a teenage medic-in-training who works in the maternity ward of the hospital. Every day she sees babies being born knowing full well that they won't live long. She believes that if the humans are going to have any chance of surviving, the research being done on the virus has to change. RM has been analyzed and tested in every possible experiment in order to find a cure, but without success. Kira realizes that the only hope still out there are those who released it--the Partials. 

After the war, the Partials retreated and haven't been seen since, but it's understood that they were immune to the virus. If a Partial could be found, captured, and analyzed, maybe a cure could be found. 

I enjoyed the book. It was darker and more mature than most books written for young adults are. In fact, if it didn't mention the fact that it was for younger readers on the back of the cover, I never would have picked up on that from reading it. There's some minor profanity here and there, and the subject matter is pretty mature in nature. I won't be letting my daughter read it for another couple of years. But there's a follow-up book coming out soon, so maybe it'll be another trilogy. If so, maybe I'll let her read them all once it's done.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

I Don't Want to Kill You

by Dan Wells
(John Wayne Cleaver series #3)

The third and what the author says is the final installment in the John Wayne Cleaver trilogy. The first two books: I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster were both great books. I Don't Want to Kill You makes the trilogy fantastic.

I don't want to say very much about the plot of the book because I don't want to spoil anything about the previous two. In my review of Mr. Monster I described the unique character of John Cleaver, so I'll refer you there if you want to get an idea of what he's all about. I enjoyed reading the first book a lot, but for awhile after reading it, I remained uncertain about how I felt about a surprising and jarring turn the book took midway through it. I enjoyed Mr. Monster more I think because I was familiar with that aspect of the story and could enjoy it for the ride that I realized I was taking. With this last book, I really can't say enough about how great a series it was.

Hopefully Dan Wells has many stories like these yet to come.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Mr. Monster

by Dan Wells
(John Wayne Cleaver series #2)

This is Dan Wells's second book featuring John Wayne Cleaver. The first book, I Am Not a Serial Killer, introduced John, a fifteen year-old who is obsessed with serial killers. He has an insatiable appetite for information about them. He reads books about them, he studies their profiles and crimes, and he feels a special kind of kinship to them. John is not a serial killer, but he knows he's destined to become one.

Not surprisingly, whenever  I describe these books to people, most people say something like, "Sounds kind of like Dexter." There are definitely similarities between the two. Both of them are disturbingly likeable characters. But while Dexter gives in regularly to his "dark passenger" by killing pedophiles and others who he rationalizes are deserving of his skills, John is trying to maintain his tenuous control over his "Mr. Monster," hoping to never begin killing. He sees a therapist regularly and has devised a list of rules that he forces himself to follow which he feels will prevent him from ever starting down that road.

Mr. Monster picks up a couple of months after its predecessor left off and I wouldn't recommend reading it without first having read the other. I think Dan Wells is an author whose popularity is going to grow if he continues to write books as interesting and entertaining as these two have been.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆