IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS - TJ Klune

 There are three robots who lived together in a house in the woods, in the trees. There is Giovanni (AKA Gio) - the father-like inventor and leader of the trio.  There is the nursing machine, Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate and Drill (AKA Nurse Ratched), and there is a hyper-active vacuum robot named Rambo (Rambo the Roomba?).  There is also living with them  a human - Victor Lawson.

Victor spends his days digging through salvage and he finds and repairs a machine they come to know as HAP (Hysterically Angry Puppet). HAP sends out a signal that alerts other robots as to the whereabouts of Gio, Ratched and Rambo. Gio has been laying low but now the other robots find him and take him back to the City of Electric Dreams where he once worked. He is now in danger of being decommissioned or given a full memory wipe and reprogrammed.  His only chance at survival is if Ratched, Rambo, HAP, and the human can rescue him.  

But it's a dangerous territory out there, nothing at all like the serenity of the trees, even for robots and a human.

I'd seen some advertising hype for this book and the author and I definitely got sucked in by it.  I'm not at all familiar with Klune's work, but the sci-fi premise sounded interesting enough. And looking at the Goodreads page at this moment, it's gotten over 4 stars in ratings by more than 13,000 people.  Impressive! So clearly somehow I'm missing something here.

The first couple of chapters were delightful.  I  liked the characters, I liked the writing, and I chuckled a few times.  Immediately I made the comparison to some of the early Ron Goulart books I read as a teen (which I greatly enjoyed).

Then about a quarter of the way through, I was waiting for something to happen. Were we still just setting up the characters and situation?  At a third of the way through ... same thing.  Half way through the book I let out a big sigh.  So ... we're just going to keep doing the same old thing?  

I didn't feel we got anywhere until nearly 80% of the way through the book.  By then I'd lost any reason to care.  Also ... robots.  I'm not sure how you make the stakes really high for a robot (I know some authors can do it), but this odd family was not appealing to me. They were completely dysfunctional (which was used well for humor) and so I didn't buy in to caring about them. So Gio gets recycled into scrap metal.  Who cares? I guess we're supposed to. 

The humor was sometimes very middle school-esque:

Nurse Ratched said, “Victor’s penis was flaccid even after I engaged my Flirting Protocol. Since I know what I am doing, it is not me, but him.”

...

  “Ohh,” Rambo said. “Are you scared of his penis?”
  Vic looked away, throat working.
  “Do not be silly,” Nurse Ratched said. “I doubt he has genitalia. He does not appear to be an android designed for sexual pleasure, and there would be no need for him to expel urine or fecal matter as you do. Gio does not have a penis or an anus.”
  Vic glared at her. “I don’t need to know that.”
  “Why? It is the truth. He does not. You are the only one here with genitalia. There is nothing to fear about them, or the lack of them. It is what it is.”
  “Do I have an anus?” Rambo asked.
  “No,” Nurse Ratched said. “But you are one, so.”
  Rambo beeped in confusion. “I thought I was a vacuum.”
  “You are. An anal vacuum.”
  “Huh,” Rambo said. “I like learning new things.”

Clearly there are people who absolutely love this book.  I am not one of them.

Looking for a good book? In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune is a scifi novel featuring (mostly) a trio of dysfunctional robots who manage to survive in spite of their odd behaviors.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

2-1/2 stars

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In the Lives of Puppets

author: TJ Klune

publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 9781250217448

hardcover, 432 pages