Rurouni Jenni Reads: PH Blog Tour: Films That Remind Me of LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff

Listen up, sprogs! Today is the glorious day of my stop for the PH Blog Tour of LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff and I am so excited to welcome you all. Huge thank you to Rafael of The Royal Polar Bear Reads for hosting.

Reading is like watching a film in your head using the author’s words and your own imagination, true cert'. So for my stop, I will be dishing out a list of 20C virtch that are a lot like reading LIKEL1K3. Fizzy, eh? (Ok guys, sorry if I am using too much of the book slang here. Blame book hangover.)

About LIFEL1K3

Synopsis:

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.

Series: Lifelike #1

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Publication date: May 29th 2018
Purchase links: Amazon | Barnes&Noble | Indiebound | Book Depository

About Jay

Jay Kristoff is the #1 international, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of THE NEVERNIGHT CHRONICLE, THE ILLUMINAE FILES and THE LOTUS WAR. He is the winner of five Aurealis Awards, an ABIA, has over half a million books in print and is published in over thirty-five countries, most of which he has never visited. He is as surprised about all of this as you are. He is 6’7 and has approximately 12,000 days to live.

He does not believe in happy endings.

Find out more: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Films That Remind Me of LIFEL1K3:

The title of the book, Lifel1k3, pertains to a type of android so advance it looks and thinks and maybe even has feelings like a real human. This book is an action-packed YA sci-fi, with such vivid descriptions and constant frenetic energy. Here are a few films that remind me of the book while I am reading it:

Pinocchio (1940)

Pinocchio is directly referenced when Raphael, one of the lifelikes (not to be mistaken from Rafael our tour host), read it from a fairy tale book. There are so many book characters who seemed like robot versions of the characters in the beloved Disney film. For example, Eve’s little robot assistant, Cricket, is a dead-ringer for Jiminy Cricket. Cricket is like the “conscience” of Eve’s ragtag crew and is always telling people the sensible thing to do but unfortunately, no one listens to him. Some of the plot elements in Pinocchio also kind of happened in the book. For instance, being swallowed by a giant sea creature!
Autómata (2014)

This is actually the first film that came to my mind upon seeing The Three Laws of Robotics in the first pages strikethroughed and replaced with “Your body is not your own. Your mind is not your own. Your life is not your own.” The film is about robots freeing themselves from these human-imposed protocols. The character of Antonio Banderas sort of reminds me of a book character called The Preacher. Both are lackeys of big-time corporations sent to hunt down rogue robots.
Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

Probably my most favorite sci-fi film ever; I get so emotional every time I watch it. This film, like the book, mirrors the tale of Pinocchio. David, a robot who looks like a real human boy reminds me of Ezekiel, an android who looks like a real human teenage boy. Both film and book explore what’s it like for robots to be programmed with human emotions, such as love. Would that kind of love ever become "true love", when robots simply perform what they are coded to do?
WALL•E (2008)

I see the post-apocalyptic earth in the book kinda like the earth in this film: covered with industrial trash and too much pollution for humans to handle. And remember Cricket, Eve’s trusty little robot assistant? His description in the books as a homunculus of spare parts, forty centimeter tall, the color of rust, with mismatched eyes, made me imagine him as a cross between Wall-E and a pants-less Jiminy Cricket.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

A particularly intense car chase scene in the book made me think of this film. Both book and film have the same grunge and grease feel in the setting. Also, I can totally vibe Furiosa’s badassery in Eve.

That’s about it! No doubt Eve and her bestest Lemon Fresh would get a kick out of watching these films, after a long day of scaverring in the Dregs. And speaking of videos, come see the book trailer of LIFEL1K3 below: