ARC Review: In the Lives of Puppets

January 17, 2023

by TJ Klune

Available April 25, 2023

✨4 stars out of 5✨

When I started this, I knew next to nothing of what it was about other than having heard vague rumblings about it being a Pinocchio retelling? All I knew: TJ Klune wrote it, which means I want to read it.

Initially, the story/plot wasn’t that interesting to me but I immediately loved the characters with my whole heart. I fell in love with them and they kept me coming back. By the climax of the book, I was fully invested and eagerly awaiting the emotional wallop that Klune has become so masterful at delivering.

Victor, a lonely scavenger, his elderly father Gio, a guileless anxiety-ridden roomba named Rambo and a sociopathic medical robot are the main cast in this little fairytale. And like most fairy tales it is melancholy but hopeful and has important lessons.

It is filled with Klune’s signature humor and pathos. It is poignant, thoughtful, charming, hilarious, insightful and WEIRD. It is a beautiful found family tale with a massively big heart.

The dynamic between Rambo the Roomba and Nurse Ratched was one of my favorite parts. Individually they are hilarious. Together they are comedy gold. Rambo is a sweet, innocent little sugar cube and Nurse Ratched (Registered Automaton to Care, Heal, Educate and Drill 😂) takes every opportunity to scare, bully and demean him like an antagonistic older sibling. Her Empathy Protocol and on-screen messages had me cracking up. She’s an unflappable mother figure with a penchant for sarcasm, and Rambo is like the gullible little brother who believes everything you tell him and just wants to help. And they both are super loyal to Vic.

So. The Pinocchio thing. ‘Puppets’ is supposed to be a retelling of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1883) which I was completely unfamiliar with. (I’m not even very familiar with the Disney version.) Every time something weird came up that I didn’t understand, or something felt like it had meaning but I didn’t know what, it turned out to be from Pinocchio. I ended up reading the wikipedia entry on Collodi’s Pinocchio just so I could somewhat understand and appreciate the references I knew I wasn’t getting.

There are also references to Philip K. Dick and probably loads of other relevant sci fi/fantasy stories I’m not picking up on whatsoever. It seemed like Klune was using the smaller references to build a general background feeling of ‘futuristic robot-filled dystopia.’ (There’s even a Firefly reference!) The Pinocchio stuff went largely unappreciated by me but I feel like the whole thing was very ‘Frankenstein meets Bladerunner with a dash of Terminator and a pinch of Wall-E.’ (The structure of the story seems to mimic that of Pinocchio in the ‘hero and cohorts experience a series of trials and obstacles’ style we are familiar with from stories like The Wizard of Oz and Don Quixote.)

Overall, the various elements all come together to make a pretty unique book with extremely lovable characters. It has the outer wrappings of a dystopian futuristic SF novel but it has the heart and soul of a fairytale.

(Oh, and remember how you had “Beyond the Sea” on repeat in your head while reading The House in the Cerulean Sea? You will have Fred Astaire singing “Cheek to Cheek” in your head with this one.)

🤖 🦾 ⚙️ 🫀

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing the digital arc.

In the Lives of Puppets is out on April 25, 2023.