LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Release date: May 29, 2018
On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.
Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.
But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.
Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.
Warnings: extreme violence, amputation, death of pets, mentions of war and torture
Lifelike is a book where when you reach the end you realize how many clues and references you missed. This book is a giant tribute to Mad Max: Fury Road, sure, but it references so much media. There is the Anastasia angle, the Pinocchio quips; it supposedly also Romeo and Juliet but I don’t see it. I guess you could say it has a X-Men bent to it which is why I categorized it into Pararnormal/Fantasy too but since I haven’t seen Blade Runner I can affirm that particular one. The basic plot is this – Eve, living in a dystopic post-4th-world-war world ruled by corporations, manifests powers in a very public arena and is on the run from some killer murderbots (who don’t follow the revered Three Laws of Robotics) and a bounty hunter, while getting flashes of the past she didn’t know she had.
The book is fast-paced action and witty one-liners through and through. We have Eve’s bestie, Lemon Fresh (who is also like a little sister to her) who delivers some amazing lines, and a logika (basically an android) called Cricket who is the sassy Pinocchio you never knew you wanted. Besides these, the motley squad also includes a cyborg dog (I am still crying over that) and an android boy Ezekiel who is one of the former murderbot variety. At first, they were on the run from Faith, another murderbotLifelike who I thought was going to be Eve’s ex but that was a false alarm. Anyway, Faith kidnaps Eve’s grandpa and takes him to Babel, a building in the heart of Gnosis’ territory, and that is where they are aiming for when they are set upon by a bounty hunter called Preacher, who, like his name implies, dresses like a preacher and carries around a bible. Thankfully, he leaves the religious fanaticism to the Brotherhood, a red-robe wearing cult of genetic purity who despise anyone with powers or cybernetic enhancements.
While you are getting entertained by the running-around-in-glass-storms, there is also a secondary plot developing wherein we get flashbacks of Eve’s childhood, and her identity as Ana (how did I not see this blatant clue) and the Lifelike’s rebellion (which is akin to fallen angels – their names are a big sign!) that killed her family. But even with all that, the book still packs a lot of twists as punches in the last quarter – everything you learn during the book is again turned on its head during the climactic moments, and you are left standing in the dust with your mouth hanging open while your heart is breaking. Also, even the cover is such a big neon clue that I imagine the cover designer cackling while making it. Does it deliver on the excitement and the emotions we expect? Hell yes, and more than what you expect!
While I loved the book even simply for how entertaining it is, I did find some aspects of the world-building to be incomplete or plot holes left unexplained. There is a lot to the science itself and going into that might be spoilery so this is your warning. So, they say that the Lifelikes were built to withstand radiation and don’t get any mutations, thereby leading to the assumption that the technology exists to prevent cancer or at the very least, know how to avoid it, and that leads me to believe that they would even know how to cure it. However, the grandpa Silas still has an incurable form of cancer lingering from before his time in the Gnosis labs -which to me is like, in-congruent on some level. Also, that biological company (I actually loved the idea of that kraken – it was ingenious!) is basically traveling all the world’s oceans but it is not clear where the territory lines are drawn between them and the other company? Like, is it an international waters thing or are they like the land is your and the sea is mine thing?
Finally, the book does a good job on building relationships between characters. Eve and Lemon have such a loving bond, and their fierce loyalty for one another is the thing that kept me from fully believing the ending. Sure, Eve felt betrayed but how can you just turn off and run into the arms of the being who just wiped the floor with your ass? But otherwise, I loved the dynamic between the foursome – I meant the dog in this, not Ezekiel – and the way it is like a nice little family. Ezekiel’s addition does make for some hilarity – Lemon’s constant flirting with him had me in splits and I loved her for it, while Cricket’s constant dragging of Ezekiel had me cheering for the logika. About Ezekiel and Eve/Ana though? I am not really sure there was a good build-up in the before – at that point, Ezekiel did not exactly have free will so she essentially ‘Her’-ed that relationship up.
In short, this is an entertaining and emotional ride throughout and delivers a world that is a mash-up of dystopian ones you are familiar with but also delivers some twists that leave you in awe.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Knopf Books for Young Readers, via Netgalley.
YA on my Mind 
Great review! I want to read this one, but have been putting it off a little bit. I love that the world building works, but I can see the gaps and how that might be a little confusing when reading. I am glad overall you enjoyed this one!
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