This was a little more what I expected from Klune and was a bit of a palate cleanser after We Burned So Bright left me a bit of an emotional wreck. I started this book the day before we got off the boat and finished it at home the next day spending 90% of the 4 four hour flight home reading it.
This is a retelling of Pinocchio and the best way I can describe it is Pinocchio inception (having never seen the movie, but assuming a few things :-D). The five main characters are Gio—an android who creates things and takes care of a young human child; Vic—the human child who is just as much of an inventor/creator as Gio; Nurse Ratched—a medical robot that has sociopathic tendencies and is dripping with sarcasm; Rambo—a neurotic Roomba that is very needy and eccentric, but loves everyone dearly and I 100% imagined a Wall-e with a voice; and Hap—a violent robot that Vic reanimated and who is learning to live in the peaceful forest they call home.
There’s betrayal and drama throughout the story, what you think at the beginning is not what you think at the end. Same thing with who is who and what is what. There were so many twists and turns that I wasn’t 100% sure I’d be able to follow the story, but thankfully they weren’t quite that complicated. It’s hard to talk about without giving things away.
The settings were just as powerful in their presence as the characters were. The forests of the Pacific Northwest is the best I can think of where the story starts to the City of Electric Dreams the story moves to after an arduous journey, you could feel both looming over the story and the reader. I found the City to be the most fascinating mostly because of how chaotic it was and Klune’s vivid descriptions of the inhabitants and Vic, Rambo and Nurse Ratched’s interactions.
I debated on whether this should be called speculative fiction because it is definitely much more science fiction, but honestly the rate we’re going these days it definitely feels more speculative and actually possible than it would’ve 10-15 years ago ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Recommendation: I very much enjoyed this. Although I didn’t rate it as high as We Burned So Bright, I still found that it’s definitely well written and kept me engaged throughout the entire novel. For me, if you can write a robot character that makes you feel—and I’m not talking about a human android, I’m talking about a Roomba here—then that author has done an excellent job. There were a couple of lull moments, but that probably says more about my declining attention span than it does about Klune’s writing.
Opening Line: “In an old lonely forest, far away from almost everything, sat a curious dwelling.”
Closing Line: “As the butterflies danced, a human and a machine looked on, their hearts beating as one.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)
