Lifelike Books in Order
Part ofJay Kristoff Books in OrderSee the Lifelike books by Jay Kristoff in order, with short summaries, series background, and a quick guide to where to start reading.
Last updated: June 8, 2026
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Publication Order
3 books
LIFEL1K3
by Jay Kristoff
2018
Seventeen-year-old Eve survives on a junk island until she uncovers Ezekiel, a beautiful android boy buried in the scrap. Hunted by fanatics and killers, she crosses a shattered America in search of answers about who, or what, she really is.
DEV1AT3
by Jay Kristoff
2019
After the battle at Babel, Eve and Lemon end up on opposite sides of a widening war. As both hunt Ana Monrova, the girl whose DNA could change everything, loyalties blur and new powers come to light.
TRUEL1F3
by Jay Kristoff
2020
Eve, Lemon, and the lifelikes head toward a final reckoning as war spreads between machines, abnorms, and human factions. The last book turns questions of identity and free will into open conflict.
Series background & context
LIFEL1K3 starts on a junk island in the ruins of America, where seventeen-year-old Eve lives by fixing machines, building robot fighters, and trying to keep one step ahead of the people who want to use or kill her. She already has enough problems before she digs a beautiful android boy named Ezekiel out of the scrap and learns her own history may be stranger than anything buried there.
Eve drives the series, but she is not alone for long. Her best friend Lemon Fresh, her loyal robot companion, Ezekiel, and later a widening group of lifelikes and other outcasts all pull the story in different emotional directions. Friendship is not a side note here. It is the part that hurts. As the trilogy moves into DEV1AT3 and TRUEL1F3, Eve and Lemon end up on different sides of the same war, and that split gives the books real bite.
The road trip gets bigger very quickly.
The setting is one of the series' best tricks. Kristoff builds a world of irradiated deserts, ruined megacities, cyborg killers, religious extremists, biotech swarms, and giant corporate strongholds, but the books never forget the human scale of all that wreckage. Characters are always looking for shelter, answers, or someone they can still trust. Even when the scenery gets huge, the questions stay personal.
Those questions are really the point. The trilogy keeps asking what makes a person real, what memory can be trusted, and whether a created being gets to choose its own life. Machines want freedom. Corporations want control. Human beings keep proving they are just as capable of cruelty as any robot. Beneath the action, that argument about identity and personhood keeps pushing the story forward.
The tone is restless and emotional. There are chases, ambushes, betrayals, and big reveals, but also a scrappy sense of humor and a lot of feeling around loyalty, love, and chosen family. This is a post-apocalyptic series, but not a cold one. For all its metal and circuitry, it is trying to get at a very old question: what counts as a soul?
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.
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