Living together in the forest, in a repurposed cabin and a tree house built by Gio, the odd group form a family. In the Lives of Puppets opens with them completely isolated and, though it is not initially clear what Gio knows of the wider world, the other three start by knowing nothing beyond their homestead. https://bookandfilmglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Puppets-BFGlobe-5423-4.40-PM.mp3 As with many excellent dramas, everything changes when a stranger enters their lives and how we view the outcome depends on whether Victor is named for optimism or irony. The adventures of the book hinge upon the family’s discovery of an extremely handsome android almost dead in the Scrap Yards. They save his life and his presence heralds the end of a temporary idyll. Whether it is the arrival of the android, Hap, or the drop of Victor’s blood on the Scrap Yard floor, something in that discovery attracts the outside world, and the gears of plot begin to turn. Victor Lawson lives with his father, Giovanni, in a spectacular treehouse complex in the middle of a giant forest. His life for the past 22 years has been solitary, but not lonely, thanks to his robot friends – Nurse Ratched (think Baymax, only sociopathic) and Rambo (if Dug from Up was a roomba). One day, while scavenging in the massive scrap yard near their home, they find a robot unlike any Victor has ever found. Unfortunately, this discovery starts off a chain of events that culminates in Giovanni being captured, with Victor determined to rescue him. Welcome to In the Lives of Puppets. 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? Milei’s biography suggests some of those ideas may have come from his five cloned mastiff dogs who are named after economists including Murray Rothbard and Robert Lucas. “They are like two metres tall, they weigh like 100kg … He calls them his four-legged children,” said Lemoine, laughing off claims that Argentina’s future leader takes political advice from those animals.

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. Inspired by Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door. In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune is published by Tor Books and will be available April 25 wherever books are sold.

Lemoine, whose stage name is Lady Lemon, said she saw striking similarities between Argentina’s president-elect and the volatile Marvel character.

A music-lover, Milei was the lead singer of a Rolling Stones cover band called Everest and, according to Lemoine, also enjoys Bob Marley and Verdi. “He loves opera. He sings opera. He’s not very good – but don’t say I said that,” she confided. Like Klune’s other works, it features a queer romance, and a very non-traditional one. After all, Vic is human, and Hap is decidedly not. I like the idea of this more than the execution, primarily because I had trouble feeling the connection between the two characters. I suppose it’s because Vic has lived an extremely isolated life, and Hap’s memory was wiped so this is the only existence he knows. It’s a desert island romance; are the feelings genuine, or because they’re the only people they know? Then Vic salvages an unfamiliar android labelled ‘HAP’. He learns that Hap and Gio share a dark past, where they hunted humans. And Hap unwittingly gives away Gio’s location. Before they know it, robots from Gio’s former life arrive – to capture and return the android to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. An epic quest of rescue and discovery [with] the author’s trademark charm, heart, and bittersweetness.” — Library Journal, starred review

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. 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. 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?