Order In the Lives of Puppets HERE
OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: TJ KLUNE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Extraordinaries, and more. Being queer himself, Klune believes it's important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive queer representation in stories.
FORMAT/INFO: In the Lives of Puppets was published by Tor on April 25th, 2023. It is 432 pages split over 24 chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. It is told from the third person POV of Victor. It is available in ebook, audiobook, and hardcover.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: All alone, deep in a forest, lives an unusual family. There's Gio, the inventor android, Rambo, a cleaning robot, and Nurse Ratched, a medical bot. There's also Victor, a young human man raised by Gio who's never seen another of his kind. They all live peacefully until one day, Victor brings home an android from the scrap yards named Hap. Repairing Hap sets off a chain of events that reveals secrets and leads to Gio being captured by strange and ominous looking robots. While Victor grapples with revelations, he knows one thing for sure: he's going to journey to the city where Gio was taken and get his father back.
In the Lives of Puppets is a book with a charming premise that unfortunately becomes a bit muddled by the end. I really liked the first half of this story. It's got a wonderful set-up, and I enjoyed meeting the robots, particularly Rambo, the very nervous cleaning bot. It was a comfort to settle into their day-to-day lives and to experience the inevitable heartbreak. There's also some genuinely humorous dialogue (Nurse Ratched's deadpan delivery alongside contrasting images on her monitor was a delight).
There's been a lot of emphasis in the marketing for this book that this tale was inspired by Pinocchio, and I can definitely see those influences in the story. However, there is just as much inspiration taken from The Wizard of Oz. You need look no further than Victor's three companions: a robot who can't remember things, one that lacks empathy, and one that's not very brave. It's a true fusion of these two tropes that stops it from being completely predictable, as you can't tell from which story the author is going to pull from next.
Overall, this was a fine adventure, but there were two elements that stopped the story from being a solid home run from me. The first is the most subjective: there was a significant amount of humor that wasn't to my taste. Much as I liked Nurse Ratched's deadpan commentary, many of her jokes have to do with her nonchalant discussion of genitalia and sex (meant to embarrass Victor like any kid whose parent starts talking about such things) and whether or not Victor is feeling aroused by another character. While I could have tolerated a couple of jokes in this vein, there is a LOT of that humor throughout the book, and I just got tired of it.
The other part where the book felt flat was I wasn't sure what the thematic point was by the end. Was it about free will and choosing your own path? Was it about forgiveness? Human connection? The one given most weight is certainly about forgiveness, particularly who has the "right" to forgive, but not even that theme landed in an impactful way. And the moment where the title of the book came up, I was left utterly perplexed by what the character was trying to convey in the context of the full sentence. Perhaps I just didn't "get" it, but the ending felt a bit rushed and left me underwhelmed.
CONCLUSION: In the Lives of Puppets had the makings of a tale I was ready to fully enjoy. I've gotten a lot out of the author's past books, and did like getting to meet the characters he created for this outing. Unfortunately, I didn't quite connect with the final act of the story. While I did like a number of things about the overall story, this feeling of lack of payoff took away from some of the emotional punch of the finale for me personally. Others without my humor hang-ups will undoubtedly like it more, but for me, the biggest takeaway is that Rambo must be protected at all costs.
3:00 AM | 
Posted by
Caitlin G. |
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1 comments:
Hello : )
I just finished the book. And I wondered if anyone felt the same about the ending as I did. I struggled to focus while listening to part 4, particularly towards the middle part of it. Admittedly I mostly listened to it when I went to bed, but it took me four nights or so to finish part 4 alone as I kept falling asleep (I actually wasn't able to sleep while listening to some books, such as House of Secrets by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini).
Sorry, I digressed.
My take is, at the end of part 3, Vic asked the question "what do you do if you've forgotten", and the first sentence of part 4 answered that with "you start again from the beginning". So part 4 is essentially how Vic "restarted" his life. That is, him learning that he didn't have parents like Gio had told him (though this had already been revealed before), him creating a heart for Hap, Hap transitioning from aggression to silent observation to falling for Vic again (and the butterflies!)
Overall, I enjoyed it to a certain degree, but, like you, I find it slightly confusing and underwhelming towards the end. Perhaps it had to do with how much I was looking forward to this book after reading Under the Whispering Door by the same author.
P. S. Thoguh Rambo wasn't my favourite character (Nurse Ratched was. Sorry XD), I love his line "oooh what's your 'designation'?"