The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Klune, Travis. In the Lives of Puppets. Tor Publishing Group, 2023.

Klune’s novel is divided into a dedication and four parts, the first three of which are divided into 24 chapters. The novel is narrated in the third person. The dedication and Part IV are narrated in a third person omniscient voice, while the 24 chapters spanning Parts I-III are narrated in the third person from the perspective of Victor Lawson (or Vic), the protagonist.

The novel opens with a dedication to humanity. In the dedication, an android, Giovanni Lawson, takes in a human boy, Victor, from a couple who were running from something unknown. Giovanni raises the boy in the forest, far from the big city he left behind.

In “Part I: The Forest,” Vic and his robot friends Nurse Ratched and Rambo explore the Scrap Yards. Vic and his friends live with Vic’s father, Giovanni, in a treehouse, implied to be in what was once Oregon. Despite their idyllic life in the forest, Vic regularly risks danger by going to the Scrap Yards, hoping to find an energy source to build Giovanni a new heart, since Giovanni is an android powered by a wooden heart.

Vic, Nurse Ratched, and Rambo return to the Scrap Yards. They realize that something destroyed and dumped the bodies of dozens of sentient androids in the Scrap Yards. They find one android who was still conscious and rescue it. Vic accidentally scratches himself and bleeds in the Scrap Yards, causing alarms to blare, but the three friends and the android manage to escape and return to their forest home. There, they repair the android and name him Hap because of the letters inscribed on his chest.

Giovanni discovers Hap and recognizes him but does not tell anyone else what he knows. Hap develops a special attachment to Vic. The four (Vic, Hap, Nurse Ratched, and Rambo) return to the Scrap Yards again. Three androids investigate the Scrap Yards and a large whale-shaped ship, The Terrible Dogfish, flies through the Scrap Yards. The group escapes back to the forest home where Gio hides them in an underground bunker. Gio remains above ground to confront the androids, who then capture him and take him to the Benevolent Tower in the City of Electric Dreams.

In the bunker, Vic watches a message that Gio recorded shortly after he discovered Hap, wherein Gio explained that machines took over the world and destroyed humans because of humanity’s destructive nature. He explains that Hap used to be a HARP (Human Annihilation Response Protocol), a machine Gio created to destroy all humanity. Despite this revelation, the four characters still decide to leave the bunker and go to the City of Electric Dreams to rescue Gio.

In “Part II: The Journey” the group disguises Vic as a robot and begins the 700-mile journey to the City of Electric Dreams. On their journey, the Coachman discovers them. The Coachman is a collector of human paraphernalia, and captures the group to display them as curios in his traveling house. The Coachman flies the house to the Land of Toys, just outside the City of Electric Dreams, to put on a show, but this show is shut down by an inspection from the Authority. After the inspection, the Coachman learns that Vic is a human and decides to help the group on their quest to save Gio.

In “Part III: The City,” the Coachman smuggles the group into the City of Electric Dreams. They go to Heaven, a brothel run by the Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy is a sentient machine who initially helped Gio escape the City of Electric Dreams.

The Blue Fairy tests the group by forcing Hap to plug into a dream machine, displaying his memories of killing humans for the rest of the group to witness. After this test, the Blue Fairy agrees to help the group sneak into the Benevolent Tower where Gio is being held. Meanwhile, Hap and Vic grow closer, and sleep in bed together the night before the rescue.

The group sneaks into the Benevolent Tower by disguising Nurse Ratched, Rambo, and Vic as Hap’s prisoners. In the Benevolent Tower, the group goes to Creation, the science laboratories where Gio used to work. Gio is there but he does not remember them. While the group attempts to convince him to return with them, other machines in the building realize that a human is there and attempt to break into the laboratory.

A flashback reveals that the Blue Fairy helped them on the condition that they upload a virus to the neural network linking all machines. This virus will wipe out the Authority's program. Hap sacrifices himself to upload the virus, erasing all memories and programming from himself and all other machines. With Gio and Hap incapacitated, the group escapes the Benevolent Tower by flying away on the Terrible Dogfish.

In “Part IV: You Start Again from the Beginning” the group settles in the central North American plains. Gradually, they remind both Gio and Hap of their relationships and restore their emotional capacity. The novel ends with Hap and Vic watching butterflies on a tree together.