Audiobook
Published by Tor.
From New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, In the Lives of Puppets is a queer retelling of the Pinocchio tale, inviting you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots – fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’, he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio – a past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old …
From New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, In the Lives of Puppets is a queer retelling of the Pinocchio tale, inviting you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots – fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’, he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio – a past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.
Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: can he accept love with strings attached?
Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful standalone fantasy adventure from the author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.
Of the TJ Klune books I've read, this one is definitely the most stressful, with the most on-screen violence too. It's super sweet though. It hits hard on cliches in a way that I enjoyed. The memory loss trope is stretched very far, which is also fine.
Content warning Plot wise Sea of Rust does a better job of post human society under the oppression of a hive mind consciousness. If I hadn’t read that then I probably would have been less disappointed here.
Enjoyable overall. The characters are lovable as is expect with TJ Klune. The plot itself was alright, I wasn’t a fan of Pinocchio, so I had low expectations, but I was kept entertained. More on this in a comment with spoiler tags.
Daniel Henning was wonderful with the narration. I was relieved that the voice for Rambo adjusted after the first few minutes, at first it was far too similar to Chauncey from The House in the Cerulean Sea.
I reviewed this novel for the Hugo-winning blog Nerds of a Feather:
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2023/06/microreview-in-lives-of-puppets-by-tj.html
