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A review by amelianotthepilot
In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book wrecked me. A combination of Wall-e and Pinocchio in a sci-fi setting.
A great improvement from his other books. It’s wild to see that he wrote something like The Lightning Struck Heart and is now all the way to this. The writing is really well done the plot is interesting the concept and world building spectacular the characters feel so real and emotional AND queer representation! The only main flaw and my major complaint is that he continues to not have a single female character. Maybe you could argue that as a man he’s just writing from what he knows and doesn’t want to overstep his bounds but at this point it’s ridiculous. Queer male relationships can exist alongside female characters. They are not exclusive. so far out of all of his books i’ve read so far he continues to have maybe one extremely minor female character in his books and all other characters are male/male coded. Even in this book, a book full of robots, only one character was female and one was nonbinary/gender fluid (it was unclear they were an omnipresent robot system).
The plot follows Gio a robot inventor man who lives in a remote forrest next to a scrapyard who is raising an orphan boy child, Victor, as his own. As he grows up Victor makes friends from scrapyard discarded robots, he collects a Nurse robot named Nurse RATCHED, and a WALL-E-esque roomba named Rambo. Then one day he finds a male android in a pile and decides to rebuild him. As stories go everything changed and went to hell and onwards goes the adventure. It was a whimsical journey full of interesting conundrums in a dystopian US that really left me introspective about relationships. Also we love some ace representation even though it came surrounded by a lack of female characters. Certainly doesn’t pass the bechdel…
A great improvement from his other books. It’s wild to see that he wrote something like The Lightning Struck Heart and is now all the way to this. The writing is really well done the plot is interesting the concept and world building spectacular the characters feel so real and emotional AND queer representation! The only main flaw and my major complaint is that he continues to not have a single female character. Maybe you could argue that as a man he’s just writing from what he knows and doesn’t want to overstep his bounds but at this point it’s ridiculous. Queer male relationships can exist alongside female characters. They are not exclusive. so far out of all of his books i’ve read so far he continues to have maybe one extremely minor female character in his books and all other characters are male/male coded. Even in this book, a book full of robots, only one character was female and one was nonbinary/gender fluid (it was unclear they were an omnipresent robot system).
The plot follows Gio a robot inventor man who lives in a remote forrest next to a scrapyard who is raising an orphan boy child, Victor, as his own. As he grows up Victor makes friends from scrapyard discarded robots, he collects a Nurse robot named Nurse RATCHED, and a WALL-E-esque roomba named Rambo. Then one day he finds a male android in a pile and decides to rebuild him. As stories go everything changed and went to hell and onwards goes the adventure. It was a whimsical journey full of interesting conundrums in a dystopian US that really left me introspective about relationships. Also we love some ace representation even though it came surrounded by a lack of female characters. Certainly doesn’t pass the bechdel…
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Torture, Violence, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, and Death of parent