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?
A queer retelling of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio starring an inventor named Victor, a mysterious android called Hap (Hysterically Angry Puppet), an anxiety-riddled Roomba vacuum named Rambo, and a sociopathic nursing machine, the Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate and Drill (Nurse Ratched, for short).
In the Lives of Puppets is a robotic world created by T.J. Klune. It is about a boy, Victor, who was raised in a secluded forest by a robotic father, Gio and his 2 robotic buddies, Nurse Ratched and Rambo. One day, as he was foraging at a nearby scrapyard, he has accidentally found a decommissioned robot and brought it home. Victor managed to activate and name it Hap. His blissful life in the forest came to stop when The Authority found a breach nearby and came knocking at their door. Through all the chaos, he learnt the hard way that he is the only human alive and some dark secrets his father has been keeping.
I have learned what it means to be alive. Remember that, in the end. I am alive. And I will never let you see what's in my heart. It was never for you.
I have enjoyed Victor's journey especially from when the chaos started. It was a little slow and mundane for my liking when it started hence, I kept peeking behind and speedread at some point. As it slowly encroached the danger zone, I finally found the gist to read-on and embraced the adventure! Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the way the author writes which is simple and straightforward with his own signature prose. It's just the pacing at the start.
Somehow, I kept comparing it with The house in the Cerulean Sea which I find it to be an awesome read! As such I did have a high expectation for this novel which I should have expelled from my mind in order to enjoy this better. Both the context is different, but I do still prefer the former. I am just amazed with the world building in this mechanical world that I can even imagined it! Klune truly is a wonderful storyteller and able to have it as relevant as possible.
If you are looking for something light, didn't mind a little LGBT and haven't read T.J. Klune's books, you should start with this and then read Cerulean Sea. They are not related but I would think the buildup is better :-)
Be it man or machine, Victor thought, to love something meant loving the ghost inside, to be haunted by it. Humanity - that nebulous concept he didn't always understand - had lived and died by their creations.
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