In the Lives of Puppets

Overall this was a pleasant listen.

I didn't put In the Lives of Puppets down.

I did have trouble with the dissonance between the cartoonish characters and the genocidal world they live in.

Nurse Rached and Rambo got on my nerves. Their constant over-acting kept taking me out of the story.
It was the more rounded characters that kept me going, Geo, and the growing relationship between Vic and Hap.

Of the TJ Klune books I've read, this one is definitely the most stressful, with the most on-screen violence too. It's super sweet though. It hits hard on cliches in a way that I enjoyed. The memory loss trope is stretched very far, which is also fine.

Enjoyable overall. The characters are lovable as is expect with TJ Klune. The plot itself was alright, I wasn’t a fan of Pinocchio, so I had low expectations, but I was kept entertained. More on this in a comment with spoiler tags.

Daniel Henning was wonderful with the narration. I was relieved that the voice for Rambo adjusted after the first few minutes, at first it was far too similar to Chauncey from The House in the Cerulean Sea.

I reviewed this novel for the Hugo-winning blog Nerds of a Feather:

http://www.nerds-feather.com/2023/06/microreview-in-lives-of-puppets-by-tj.html