In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

I went through this whole book thinking it was called In the Lives of the Puppets. What should come as a surprise to absolutely no one is that the actual title is kilometers, no, miles, better than that. It just goes to show how much thought is put into one of TJ Klune’s stories and how removing the most used English word can alter the entire atmosphere of the novel. It makes it feel just slightly more fairytale-esque and dreamlike.

The book tells the story of Victor Lawson, a human raised by a caring inventor automaton named Giovanni. Living alongside them are two other robots: a sarcastic and partially insane nurse robot, Nurse Ratched, and Rambo, a sweet little vacuum who just wants to be loved. Everything changes when Victor, Nurse Ratched, and Rambo go to the scrapyards and repair an android with a terrible past—Hap. When Hap unconsciously alerts the Authority of Giovanni’s whereabouts, Giovanni is taken, the four remaining members of the family must journey across the country to find Giovanni and save him before he’s decommissioned and lost forever.

I have a YouTube channel where I animate some of my book reviews! Be sure to check it out at: www.youtube.com/@theeccentricbookshelf.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit! Klune’s style is just so gripping, ranging from his word choice to the sentence structure. The way it’s written makes it so that you don’t really ever get bored reading, it so easily pulls you farther and farther into the novel, enveloping you with the characters, story, plot, and action. Frankly, half the time I’m just impressed by how well he varies his sentence structures. Klune also keeps a lot of the book quite mysterious, planting the seeds, but not revealing it totally, which, once again, just keeps grabbing you and smashing your face further and further into the book (not literally, of course).

Compared to The House in the Cerulean Sea, however, I didn’t like it nearly as much. THITCS was just so whimsical and magical and I suppose I went in hoping that LOP would be the same. It wasn’t. At least not to the same degree. There’s some whimsy, but it’s more sci-fi-y and feels less magical. If THITCS was bright and colorful, this one felt like it was more muted, cooler colors with more shading. That’s not bad at all, it’s a style that can feel more serious and maybe more mysterious, but I just prefer the brightness of THITCS more.

However, LOP does have a lot of incredible redeeming qualities. Like I said, there’s so much mystery, but there are also so many layers to the characters, and so many meaningful metaphors tucked away within the novel—I would probably reread the book purely to look for all the ones that I missed. Starting with the point on the characters, THEY’RE JUST SO INCREDIBLY CRAFTED AND THEY ALL HAVE THEIR DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS AND IT’S SO IMPRESSIVE HOW WELL THOUGHT OUT EACH CHARACTER IS. They aren’t just black and white, there’s (wow lot’s of color metaphors in this review) different shades or multiple colors for each of them. They have different incentives and a lot of them seem incredibly valid.

There’s also so. Many. Metaphors. So many of the major plot points had another meaning outside of the novel, a meaning that reflected back onto the real world and I feel like this is one area where LOP excels against THITCS. There’s certainly plot points that can be expanded in THITCS, but LOP is just so full of them. The one at the end (can’t spoil it 🙁) is so sad, but it feels like the whole story has been building up just to showcase that moment and there’s so much weight behind it and it feels like it’s the one that Klune has really wanted to highlight. Anyways, great book! You should read it! Look for the metaphors!