T.J. Klune

New York Times bestselling 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. 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? 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

I’m sorry but this is a hate annotation. Why do men write things like this? Saying you can’t take no for an answer because you’re “an idiot” is the same as saying “boys will be boys” to absolve yourself of any responsibility for your choices. This line is made even more stupid when you think about the men Nurse Ratched has known up to this point. Gio, Vic, and even Hap are not chauvinists. Why would she make a generalization like this if not to stroke the author’s ego?

Cloudface

"Interesting," Nurse Ratched said. "Why is it that males do not accept no for an answer?"

"Yes. You are." She continued on down the road.

Lindsay

No civilization can survive indifference. It spreads like a poison, turning fire into apathy, a dire infection whose cure requires more than most are willing to give.

Memory, ever-present, a reminder of what was and what could be, if only one was brave enough to reach for it.

Annabelle Gauthier

What you are feeling now might be considered happiness." 

"It's terrible," Hap said. “I want to p-punch something." And with that, he turned and began to punch the metal walls of the bunker.

"This is so nice," Rambo said to no one at all.

Molly Sheerer

"Womp womp," Nurse Ratched said as the screen went darkened. "That is exactly what happened. Please do not hold your applause. I need validation."

Julia Rutgers

Vic squirmed, trying to keep his thoughts in order, but they were on the wings of butterflies, floating up around him, just out of reach.

[ . . . ] next to a creek where the water chuckled as it flowed over rocks.

Emma Hak-Kovacs

“What if I wish for impossible things?”

“Then you're doing it right. It always seems impossible when you first start.”

She said it wasn’t unheard of for people to identify as asexual, meaning those who were "ace" didn’t experience attraction in the same way others did. Sex-positive or sex-repulsed, there was no wrong way to be.

"So I’m not malfunctioning?" Vic asked nervously, mulling the word "asexual" over in his mind.

"You are not," Nurse Ratched had replied. "I also do not experience sexual attraction, and I am perfect. The same could arguably be said about you.”

“You seem to be suffering from an intense anxiety disorder. But that is fine. We are all unique. Victor is asexual. Giovanni is old. And I have sociophatic tendecies that manifest themselves in dangerous situations."

In the Lives of Puppets quotes

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