Ruins By Dan Wells

 I think my favorite experience with any of Dan's books was asking for  "I Don't Want to Kill You" in every bookstore in Australia until I finally get my hands on it.  I got some really strange looks in response. I have enjoyed all of his series and I can't wait to read this book.

Partials is a post-apocalyptic story of the survivors from the Partial war. Ruins is the third installment of the sequence and I can't wait to get my hands on the book.  Here is the synopsis:

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. 

Sounds awesome, right?

Dan Wells writes in a variety of genres, from dark humor to science fiction to supernatural thriller. Born in Utah, he spent his early years reading and writing. He is the author of thePartials series and the John Cleaver series. He has been nominated for both the Hugo and the Campbell Award, and has won two Parsec Awards for his podcast Writing Excuses. 

Want to know more about him? Check out the interview below. 

You have written post-apocolayptic books and psychological thrillers. Which genre do you enjoy writing more? 

I've also written historicals, a horror comedy, a magepunk, a corporate satire, and a zombie superhero western. The genre I enjoy writing most is the genre I haven't tried yet.

You suddenly find out you’re a partial with special abilities. What would they be?

Using only the Partial models described in the books, and theorizing how I could go this long without knowing I was Partial, I'd say my powers are very similar to the other "sleeper" Partials in the series: basically human, but a little faster and a little less prone to illness and possessing a weak connection to the link that I've never really gotten a chance to use before. Though I get sick ALL THE TIME, so obviously that's not true. Maybe I was engineered as a disease vector? Back when I designed the Partials I almost gave them photosynthesis, because I thought it would be such a great power for a soldier to have: no need to haul around food, you can just soak up the sun. If I could do that I'd write outside, and never have to stop for lunch. That would be awesome. 

Have you ever based your characters on people you know?

All the time. No one character is a direct analogue to any other person, though, except in the case of corpses--I will often put my friends into books as dead bodies, or people slated to quickly become such. The living characters tend to be amalgams of people I know, taking a bit here and a bit there to build a familiar yet unique personality.


Does Kira like bacon? 

Now that you mention it, I doubt Kira's ever had bacon, at least not since the Break. Most of the protein they eat in East Meadow comes from fish, and even the chicken Xochi prepares in the first book is considered a delicacy. Some of the farms keep cows and goats for milk, so the people occasionally eat those, but pigs are a whole different thing. On the other hand, Samm talks about hunting wild pigs on the mainland, and it's not unlikely that there would be some wild pigs on Long Island as well--they're an incredibly durable species, and all you'd really need is one breeding pair on the island to eventually fill it with roving herds. I'm going to guess that Kira's never had the chance, and then I'm going to further imagine a scene where Samm finds a wild boar and cooks it up and introduces Kira to the glories of bacon. She'll love it. Assuming they both survive the third book.*evil grin* 

Which group of people would you belong to in your Partials books? Would you be with Kira figuring out the cure? The Voice?

Honestly, I would probably try to get into the Senate, attempting to help people that way, and then get stomped on for my complete political un-savvy-ness, and end up inthe Voice raging against the machine. The Voice is certainly the group I identified with the most while writing, but I don't think I'd go straight to rebellion until I'd tried and failed the more peaceful route. 

Did you ever get so far into the books that when you looked up, you were surprised to see that the world was still in one piece?

No, I tend to have the opposite problem--I'll walk around, see the non-ruined world around me, and think "that would be a good shelter." "That would be a good place to send a salvage party." "That storefront would totally end up as a den of wild dogs." Everywhere I go, I destroy the world with my mind. 

What is a typical day for you?

Awesome.

Or, if you want a real answer: wake up, help get the kids to school, then do some yoga with my wife and 2-year-old (doing yoga with a 2-year-old is less exact than the people in the video want it to be). After that I'll take an hour or two to do Internet stuff, like twitter and facebook and goodreads and answering emails. Then I'll get to real work, which depending on the day can be either writing, editing, outlining, or research. On rare occasions I'll take the entire day and write a blog post. I work from home, in an office I can lock, and with a short break for lunch I tend to finish up around 5:30. Then it's dinner, helping kids with homework, putting kids to bed, and the playing games or watching movies or reading at night. It's a pretty fun work day, but you'll notice that none of it requires me to go outside or interact with other humans--I have to go out of my way to find reasons to leave the house, or I'll never see the sun. 

Which character out of all your books do you relate to the most?

Probably Kira. She knows what she wants and she goes for it, and she's feels things very strongly, and sometimes she's wrong and she screws up and she has to fix it. People always ask how I could write a teenage girl accurately, given that I've never been one, to which I say: people are just people, and Kira is as much like me as anyone I've ever written. 

Have any of your books given you nightmares?

You've got it backward: my nightmares give me books. 

If you had to choose between the last book on earth and a bacon sandwich, which would you choose?

Depends on the book. And on the sandwich, for that matter. If one of them looks particularly awesome, I could see myself going either way. I have to make these decisions on a case by case basis.