Thank you to Tor Books for the gifted copy in return for my honest review!

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

In the same vein of TJ Klune’s other more recent novels; The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets is a very heartwarming, cozy fantasy story with loveable characters and some great queer representation. It differentiates itself from the two aforementioned books by following a more traditional quest storyline, in a loose retelling of Pinnochio. Now I’ll be honest, I’m not the most familiar with the story of Pinnochio, I’ve seen the original Disney version technically about 15 years ago but that’s the extent of my knowledge (and I barely remember that). So I can’t judge this book on how good of a retelling it is, so my review is solely based on how it stands as its own work. 

In the Lives of Puppets follows Victor ‘Vic’, the son of an inventor named Gio who live in treehouses in the forest with two robots, the loveable yet sadistic Nurse Ratched and the adorable vacuum Rambo. One day while exploring the forest and foraging through the old junk piles they find a new robot in need of repairs named Hap, and their lives are then drastically changed for good. It is a very enjoyable, and as I said before, heartwarming story that I think will be enjoyed by TJ Klune fans and new readers alike. The characters are charming, the romance is sweet, the adventure is fun, and the book altogether will pull on your heartstrings (no pun intended).

In the Lives of Puppets definitely has much higher stakes than the previous two books (these are the only two books of his that I’ve yet to read and also his most popular which is why I am constantly comparing), however I found it surprisingly much slower to read than the others. It was only about 40% through that the actual plot, the quest, began, while I did actually enjoy the low stakes opening of the book, I just thought it went on way longer than it should have. Once the quest did begin, I actually found a lot of it to be very repetitive. Though it was following the Pinnochio story, I wish it had chosen to add some new ideas to it to make it more exciting because the story began to drag a bit for me. It wasn’t until the ending that I felt my attention being completely drawn again. The story became more intriguing by adding more stakes and I found myself not able to put the book down because I needed to find out what was going to happen next.

When it comes to its characters, I really loved them, they were charming and sweet and full of personality and I’m sure anyone else who has read In the Lives of Puppets would agree. Rambo is definitely my favourite, if you’ve seen Adventure Time the character is almost comparable to BMO (who I absolutely love). I do have one thing however, though it is a bit of a spoiler so if you don’t want to know skip this paragraph, although I do think going in this book you will likely guess that this is to come. Okay skip now, the human/robot romance, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I guess Hap is humanistic, but it just felt very weird to me. Maybe it was just me but every time Victor started describing him (in a way that was clear he had a bit of a crush) it was so strange to me, describing his flat wooden chest and stuff. Also, Hap has basically no memories of anything from before he met Vic so while he was actually very old and Vic was an adult it just was uncomfortable. Like I could get on board with a human/ghost relationship in Under the Whispering Door but I don’t know about this one it might be a step too far for me because at least the ghost was also once a human and not even that long ago lol, but if you’ve read this one please let me know what you thought!!

Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was, a heartwarming adventure story, and I think most readers will too, but it didn’t particularly stand out to me and had its issues, it was just a bit disappointing as a big fan of his other books. I’d still give it 4 stars though and definitely recommend checking it out.