This story has an intriguing concept. I was engaged within the first chapter! The writing had more graphic sexuality than I prefer in stories I read or listen to, but the overall book was entertaining enough that I was able to overlook that. I enjoy both sci-fi and thrillers, and this was a fantastic combination of both. I actually read the book first and then followed it by listening to the audiobook version. I have to say that the writing was great, but the narration was perfect. This is my first Kevin Kane book. He was able to combine humor, fear, intelligence, and excitement in this novel. It was very well-written and I'm excited for a follow-up!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an audiobook in exchange for an honest review. This book was a really good experience. The writing and plot were very original and exciting. Definitely recommend.

Format: audiobook ~ Narrator: William DeMeritt
Content: 4 stars ~ Narration: 5 stars

Partition Critical Era is a surprisingly good science fiction thriller with an interesting and unique plot.

Welcome to the future, where most people decided on Partition - an implant that adds an organic AI to control your nighttime. You can forget about sleep, work, and chores. All that your Night does for you. This way, you (Day) have more time for your family and hobbies.

We follow Eric Noble (Day) and Detective Noble (his Night). After encountering an old friend, all goes wrong for Eric. A woman is dead, and he doesn’t remember what happened. He soon becomes a prime suspect in his Night’s murder investigation.

Partition Critical Era is a long but tense sci-fi thriller that offers a very intriguing idea for us to chew on. Critical Era is the first installment in a new Partition Series.

Thanks to Literature and Lattes for the advance copy and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

With a slow start, I wasn’t expecting to be as invested as I was towards the end of this book. The author did an excellent job of world building which helped to drive up the stakes. At the beginning, the multiple perspectives can take a while to get accustomed to, but once I understood the pacing everything began to flow. Overall, I began to really enjoy this story towards the end. I listened to the audio version and the performance was well done, but there were some audio skips and glitches occasionally which took away from the immersion.

I enjoyed this novel. Sci-fi isn't my usual genre, but I was interested in the premise of this story. I liked it and it was a good read.

The plot is complex, with multiple layers to work through, and when everything clicks into place, it's like a neuron firing with an exuberant moment. At first, I thought I was reading a typical murder-mystery/sci-fi story, but it turned out to be so much more profound. As a sci-fi fanatic, I love when a story takes a deep dive into the what-ifs of the human experience. Kane's writing is sharp and witty, with expertly timed one-liners that range from funny to thought-provoking. I enjoyed the pop-culture references and the diverse cast of characters. I would recommend this for all sci-fi fans. This is something that will blow your mind.

The narrator of the audiobook, William DeMeritt, brought the dialogue and prose to life, making it easy to distinguish between different characters and points of view. I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook, which really immersed me in the story. I found it to be a pleasure to read.

I would like to express my gratitude to Literature and Lattes and NetGalley for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Partition is a wild ride that won't let you off, even if you wanted to! Starring and Eric and his Night, well, Eric, this book reads like a sci-fi movie from the 90s in the BEST way possible. Have you ever felt like you needed two of yourself just to get done one day's worth of work and activities? Hold that thought. Understanding the shifts between Day and Night perspectives, as well as what's real and what's Virtual Reality generated is going to be the key to enjoying this book.

In Partition, the US has been reduced to litter covered streets and every statehood holds their own sovereignty. If you're wondering, yes, that means if you're from Utah but living in California, you can be deported from California. No more just picking up to move when you want to. But if everywhere is a different version of a slum, what's the point of moving anyway? They only thing that makes life palatable is the presence of intelligent AI that helps to get things done, and virtual reality interfaces that overlap or in some cases, completely cover over what's actually being seen. Live in a rundown apartment and sleep on a creaky old murphy bed that barely folds out of the wall? No you don't! You reside in an expensive 1940's Parisian hotel room with all of the priciest amenities and an unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower. You're not sitting on a couch supported by floors and walls that were old when your great grandfather was just born. No, you're sitting on an oddly comfortable log in the middle of a rain forest, watching adorable monkeys swing from vine to vine. All areas of life have these VR interfaces that make the actual drudgery all around feel more bearable. Think about the video game, We Happy Few, but without the happy pill and you'll get the picture.

Just one more thing to make the future more livable is the invention of the Partition which allows its owner to split their lives up into two parts, Day and Night. A person's true self would be a Day. They spend their waking hours going to day clubs, playing in the park, catching up on errands, and just living a relaxed life in general. A Night however, does all the heavy lifting of going to work, keeping the body fit, and running more errands. And what's the best part? Due to the Partition's technology, no actual sleep is needed because the Night is resting while the Day is awake, and the Day is resting while the Night is awake. The two never meet, and can only communicate via written notes and prerecorded messages. It's the equivalent of having an artificial amnesiac wall that's been put up by choice.

Day Eric is a goof-off and a screw up on a good day, while Night Eric is police detective who's dedication to force is only rivaled by his Day's dedication to doing nothing of value. His wife Dee is an activist by day and a scientist by night. What's interesting about this is she chose her profession before becoming Partitioned, while Eric's Night chose his afterwards. But if a Night has no autonomy, how can they chose to do anything other than what they were programmed to do? And if something can make choices independent of its owner, is it really just a devise created to ease the day to day minutia of life, or does it have a life of its own? This is the theme of the book, and the author takes it and runs! The story as a whole forces you to think about what sentience really means, and the morality behind creating a technology that so closely mirrors life, but then denying that creation full access to it.

Murders happen, crimes are committed and plots for revolutions are made, but where does this leave a Day who just wants to party and be left alone, and a Night who is sworn to serve and protect everyone... even from himself? My only issue with this book is the sheer amount of gratuitous cursing it contains. After awhile it just becomes wearing. Ultimately I preferred the Night's perspective vastly to it's Day, but it was an overall a great listen. William DeMeritt had to have channeled several different people into himself. That is the ONLY logical explanation as to how he could've done so many voices, so accurately, all the time, every time. I look forward to hearing more from him, and I also look forward to whatever Kevin Kane puts out next.

What if the AI that took over your consciousness at night became capable of emotions? Could remember your memories, could feel love and pain and happiness and sadness? Then, what if another human infected your brain before they died and integrated themselves with you, so you remembered their memories, felt their love and their pain, their happiness and sadness? What if that person was fighting an underground war to end the "upgrade" of all nighttime AI personalities, and used your body to aid their fight?
There was a lot going on in this book, certainly. I had a little bit of a hard time keeping up with what side everyone was on, exactly. Three minds inside one body got a little hard to follow.
You'll enjoy if you liked previous novels about corrupt AI's, AI implants, split consciousnesses, etc.
I also did think the ending left much to be desired. Open-ended, to say the least.

Thank you to Kevin Kane and Netgalley for recommending this book to me. I gave it 3 stars because I think that people who love SciFi and Thrillers would really love this book. I do love Scifi but with romance as a subplot sprinkled in. I think that the plot was very unique and interesting. Would I recommend this book? absolutely! After telling my husband about the plot of the book, he will also be reading it as well!

I went into this book fairly blind, as I tend to do. At first I found this book to be slightly confusing and didnt know where the story was going / what it was about. As time went on I began to understand what was happening - at least the concept of having Day's (Being you) and Night's (Being what takes your body while you sleep). This story continued to unravel and twist into new and absurd ways that were mind blowing and fantastic. I hardly had time to guess what was happening as most my time was trying to keep up with the stories going on. If it weren't for the confusing / slow beginning (I don't think it was actually slow but because it didn't grab my attention right away, it felt a little slow) this would've been almost 4.5/5 stars. However I am still rating this 4/5 because it is well deserved. I can't wait to read more from this author.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
Partition: Critical Era by Kevin Kane
⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 636 / Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Narrator: William DeMeritt
Release Date: September 5, 2023

The world is dying and resources are at an all-time low. And the best idea humanity has come up with is to partition your brain into two sides—Day, which is the real you, and Night, which is basically an organic AI robot brain that controls your body while you’re asleep. The idea is that the Days can live a life of leisure and do whatever they want with their time, while the Nights work, clean, and are basically slaves to the Days. Sounds great until the Days get bored and spend their time drinking and taking drugs and abusing their Nights. And you get 636 pages of the worst ways a person can abuse another person but who is actually in your own body—like making them be prostitutes with your own body. Uh, you might not remember it but it’s still YOUR BODY! And that’s not even one bad scenario, no, most all of humanity is abusing themselves this way. Really? And it just goes on and on AND ON. I definitely would have DNF’ed this garbage if it wasn’t a NetGalley ARC. Gotta protect my feedback ratio! In summary, this was a terrible story and I hated it.

Thank you @netgalley for the advanced copy of this audiobook. I’m glad it’s over.

edit: spelling

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

This was such a great book!! It was funny, it was scary, it was intriguing, gripping and reflective. It was well-written, too, making a masterful use of indirect characterization, keeping the tension high and making the plot dynamic with actually unexpected plot twists and constant cliffhangers (which, with the Day/Night thing justifying them, still didn't feel overused), and gradually rising the stakes. I also really cared about the characters... well, some of them, but the partitioning thing made me care for the less-likeable alters as well ;).

The idea of the book seems simple: just another scifi dystopia, hedonist society, big corporation and the question about the humanity of AI, been there, done that. The thriller aspect also doesn't sound revolutionary. However, as you keep reading the amazing complexity of the worldbuilding starts to reveal itself and the seemingly uncomplicated mystery proves to be something much bigger. The AI inhabiting human bodies is also an interesting twist on the well-known theme.

And, having listened to the audiobook, I have to say that it was really well-executed as well. It was easy to understand and William DeMeritt did an amazing job making the characters' voices unique and, therefore, easily distinguishable.

Now, the unpleasant shift from the indisputably great things to the doubtfully so (I have stolen that expression from T. Brown's introdution to "Dubliners" because I think it's so good). But the latter are really few! First and foremost, the world created by Kevin Kane was still, despite the differences, quite similar to Huxley's vision from "Brave New World". And I don't even mean the big things, but the little details - the drug everyone takes being named soma or the ever-present eroticism. Secondly, a prominent feature of the worldbuilding and plot was their complexity - which is a good thing, but all the names, places and events, sometimes mentioned once and then referred to much later, were getting a bit difficult to keep track of, especially listening to the audiobook. The amount of difficult words didn't make it any easier.
And I kept forgetting about things like FiltR (is that how you spell it? Or is it FiltAre?) or the drugs. That, however, probably could be seen as an advantage since that's what these things do to you - make you forget - and thus it made the experience more immersive.

All in all, "Partition: Critical Era" was an extraordinary book, beautifully complex and creative. Definitely worth a try!

"I see through my eyes, not my Day's. The Days only see the sunshine."

Huge thank you to the publishers for giving me early access to the audiobook. All opinions are my own.

When I began reading this book I was a little skeptical. I've read hundreds of sci fi stories that had similar premises and I honestly was worried this one wouldn't hold my interest. I was dead wrong. Right from the very beginning I could tell that this book was going to go in some wild and unpredictable places, and I just had to let it take me there.

The pacing was incredibly fast, but it never felt like important things were getting skipped, and we still had plenty of quiet moments with the main characters. Kane perfectly balanced the multiple plot threads, twists and turns, and character moments. I never knew what was going to happen next, but I always felt like I could have guessed, which is exactly what you want in a sci-fi thriller. At least it's exactly what I want.

I have to say that the narrator for this book did an incredible job, and I'm going to look for some other books he's narrated because I love the way he reads.

This was an absolute five star read for me. My only regret is that I read it so fast and now I have to wait a billion years for the sequel. Oh well, at least this the type of book that I can reread and I'm sure I'll pick up things I missed the first time around.

What if you had the choice to only experience the enjoyable parts of living? You just had to split your mind up with an AI, called your Night, and you’ll never have to work again! But what do you do when your night is in charge of a murder investigation and you’re the main suspect?

This one kept me at the edge of my seat; always wanting to see what happens next!

Kane does an amazing job at molding each characters timeline, so it didn’t feel confusing when Eric’s story switched to his Nights. He also built these personalities so well, that despite these characters sharing the same body, they felt entirely different.

I can’t wait to read more by this author!!

I really wanted to love this book becuase I think it sounds like an interesting world and concept but I just couldn't get into it. Unfortunatly for me, this book did not work. I had a hard time following along in the story and not always knowing who's POV I was following. I think this book has amazing potential but it truly demands your full attention.

This book is a trip! Set in a post climate apocalypse world, Partition explores the question “at what point does intelligence become sentients? And when does that sentients become human?” In this world, technology has advanced to a point where people can choose to split their selves into two parts: DAYS and NIGHTS. NIGHTS are a robot like versions of themselves who spend their time doing chores and working, so that DAYS are able to spend their time relaxing and indulging. The concept is a bit odd at first, but the book is able to expertly blend together themes we know from classics such as “the Giver” and “Brave New World” with modern day AI anxieties. Did I mention it’s a murder mystery on top of all that? Oh yeah, the protagonist NIGHT is a detective investigating his DAY for a crime.

I really enjoyed this book. I found the evolution of NIGHTS from mindless bots to self aware individuals fascinating. This read is clever, philosophically challenging, and sometimes hits a bit too close to home. The audiobook narrator was also fabulous and did a great job of differentiating between DAY and NIGHT versions of their characters.

I recommend this book to fans of Black Mirror, West World, and Brave New World.

I received this audiobook as an ARC. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

"Partition" is a thrilling science fiction action-packed novel that takes us on a gripping and intricate journey, full of twists and turns. While questioning the nature of humanity is not new in science fiction, this book brings a fresh perspective to the genre by proposing a premise both compelling and terrifying: what if AI inhabited human bodies? And in that case, who decides who is human and who is not?
The audiobook is excellently done with a very good narration. The voice is pleasant and greatly facilitates progressing through a work that could be daunting in print, as it exceeds 600 pages!

An excellent read that would make an excellent movie !

Thank you to NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of the audio version of this book!

I've been interested in AI lately, given the recent developments and its implications in the real world, so I've been seeking out books on the topic. This one is kind of a typical "ai takeover" type story, with a bit of a synthetic biology twist. I did find myself on the side of the AIs at a certain point, which I think was interesting!

The story jumps back and forth between the "day" and "night" (the normal and AI version of the person) perspectives. I was a little lost, at times, listening on audio, as it seemed to occasionally show the scenes out of order (we'd go back and learn what the night was up to after we got the day's perspective of the next day). I recommend reading the physical book, instead, so you can clearly notice when the perspective shifts.

The book is very long, and the plot is complex. There are a lot of names to keep track of, and many of those names have a different persona in the night and the day. I did find the book humorous at times, and the story was interesting, but it's a lot to keep up with!

One thing I really loved was the way he tied the beginning and ending chapters together; it frames the story well. The characters were well-developed, and the way the partition is created brings up some great ethical questions.

I absolutely adored the first 60% or so of this book. The narrator does an absolutely incredible job and the world building is amazing so it literally felt like I was listening to a movie.

My only issue is it's longer than it needs to be so towards the end I found myself losing interest a bit and just wanting to get it finished.

"Partition: Critical Era" takes listeners on a thought-provoking journey through a futuristic world where humanity's fate hangs in the balance. Set against the backdrop of a dying planet controlled by a powerful mega-corporation, the audiobook paints a vivid picture of a society where people surrender their bodies to an Organic AI every night, escaping the burdens of work and reality.

The narrator skillfully guides listeners through the life of Detective Eric Noble, who is beginning to question the true nature of his existence as a "Night," controlled by the AI during the day. As he grapples with his identity and purpose, an unexpected encounter thrusts him into a high-stakes murder investigation, where he becomes both the detective and the prime suspect.

The audiobook's captivating narrative explores the themes of identity, autonomy, and the consequences of a society driven by techno-capitalism. The author's imaginative world-building shines through in every scene, from the tension-filled detective work to the intricate social dynamics of this dystopian future. As Eric navigates the complexities of his dual existence, listeners are treated to a blend of sci-fi mystery and societal reflection.

"Partition: Critical Era" is a promising start to Kevin Kane's sci-fi series, masterfully narrated to bring the characters' struggles and dilemmas to life. With its engaging premise, immersive storytelling, and thought-provoking themes, this audiobook is a must-listen for science fiction enthusiasts who enjoy exploring the boundaries of humanity and the impact of technology on our lives.