#BlogTour ‘In The Lives Of Puppets’ by T.J Klune

About the book…

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?

Author TJ Klune invites you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.

Thank you so, so much to Black Crow PR and UK Tor for the opportunity to read and review ‘In The Lives Of Puppets’ by T.J Klune, published on April 25th, one of my most anticipated books of the year (apart from the followup novel to ‘Wolfsong’, ‘Ravensong’ which is out in August, also from Tor)

T.J Klune has done it again!
In this novel, he deconstructs the story of Gepetto and Pinocchio to make a futuristic allegory of love, family dynamics and environmental control.

Victor, a child rescued by android Giovanni, comes of age in a fantastical, futuristic homestead nwhich Gio builds from spare and found parts, in the treetops of the woods outside the city limits. A 6 part treehouse stretches from tree to tree, making a community but also separate areas for Gio, Victor and the other 2 robots they share their lives with. It sounds idyllic, creating something from the parts which a larger society deems ‘useless’, they become sources of joy from the reconstruction of a broken record player bringing the gift of music, to the laboratories which both Gio and Victor populate with findings from the Scrap Yards.

There, they hide from the Old Ones, who throw away anything which is lacking in value or function to the vertiginous and dangerous tree top Scrap Yards. Vic spends his days scavenging these forbidden Scrap Yards, which to be fair, are extremely dangerous and potentially deadly, with his robot companions, a hilariously dark nurse bot named RATCHED and Rambo, a slightly larger than a Hoover bot with anxiety and identity issues.

They live far from general society, the novel beginning with Gio’s escape from the city far behind, leaving the readers unsure if he is running from or to something. We are with him as he constructs this new life for himself, and are unaware he is an android, living on his own until 2 people, also running from persecution, leave their baby on his doorstep.  Victor-is he named for Victor Frankenstein , maybe?-is taken in, the idea of leaving him to die never once crossing Gio’s mind.

They live in harmony, human and non-human alike, learning,growing and making both day and night, creating this under the radar life until it is disturbed when Vic finds an android named HAP, for whom he has feelings which are strange, new and not altogether unwelcome. HAP being restored to life creates an alert to Gio’s wherabouts, and suddenly, their entire way of life is at risk.

Vic and his friends have to find the strength to go to the City Of Electric Dreams to find Gio, the father/creator/inventor who made this entire family possible .

A meditation on what it means to be human from the perspective of those who would be regarded as less than, this a brave and stunning novel that makes a seamless transition, sometimes on the same page, from raising tears in your eyes, to laughing uproariously.

Its a h=journey of self discovery, of finding out what makes you uniquely you, addresses issues of identity, sexuality and that all important feeling of family being more, much more, than just those beings to whom you are biologically related.

In the battle of what is most responsible for making you the person you are, nature and nurture take second place to what is in your heart, and how far you are prepared to go for those you love.

About the author…

TJ KLUNE is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (Into This River I Drown) and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company.

His novels include ‘The House In The Cerulean Sea’ and ‘The Extraordinaries’. Being queer himself, TJ believes it’s important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.

Links-http://www.tjklunebooks.com/

Twitter @tjklune @BlackCrowPR @TorUK