I just want to slip in here and publicly worship at the feet of TJ Klune whose mastery of tale-telling is exemplary. His latest book “In the Lives of Puppets” is a rich, endearing and gripping concoction, utilizing a veritable fabulists attic of the odd and unusual. We have an excitable appliance, a laconic and acerbic nurse robot and a kindly old creator who live in a deep dark forest hiding an eccentric junkyard dream of a home built up and down trees. At the edge of the forest, there is the foreboding and forbidden Scrap Yard home of the lurching Old Ones; the detritus of hundreds of years and the endless source of things that deserve a chance to be fixed.
Ah, the characters are just to swoon over in their well-rounded quirkiness. Robots and androids and…one human boy/man…
There is a quest to see the Wizard, er, the Blue Fairy who lives in the gaudy fearful city of Electric Dreams home of well, just about everything.
The story starts sweet and small and then accrues layers of danger and monsters and terror and love. The City is guarded by destroyer androids who defend the inhabitants of the Benevolent Tower topped with an ominous flying whale of an airship called The Terrible Dogfish looming at the peak of the 125th floor.
Dear Lord… Please finish whatever you are reading now and take this book to heart.
Its story and its endless imagination and the dear, dear multi-layered characters will stay with you always. ~~ Sue Martin
For more titles by TJ Klune click here
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