Book Review: Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters

Anna Karenina's marriage to Alexei Karenin holds nothing to interest her, other than their son Seryohza. Besides, Karenin spends too much time at the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration, tinkering with his robots and his new groznium face plate, which seems to have a life all its own. After a chance encounter with the Count Vronsky at a Grav station, the Anna finds herself inexplicably drawn to him and soon begins a love affair that threatens her standing in society and may bring about the destruction of the Russian people.

Android Karenina takes the classic Leo Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina about a noblewoman risking her family and her standing in society for the love of a man other than her husband and mashes it up with a tale of robotics and of alien lifeforms trying to invade the Earth. Sounds bizarre -- and it could have been in the hands of another author, but Ben H. Winters deftly mixes what should be two completely opposite worlds into one engrossing novel. Even though the story takes place in the late 1800s, the robots have always been part of Russian society, performing menial tasks and acting as companions in the form of personal robots, such as Android Karenina is to Anna. Winters has manages to not make them feel futuristic but rather very Victorian, very Jules Vernian -- especially with how they travel to the Moon or to Venus.

Winters also sticks to the main storyline with which most who have read Tolstoy's novel are familiar, but the tweaking of plot elements and of characters themselves makes the story seem fresh. Android Karenina turns out to be a surprisingly satisfying and appealing read. Definitely one of the more fun books of 2010.


Android Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters
Quirk Classics
ISBN: 978-1-59474-460-0
softcover, 545 pgs.

Received book from publisher

Image from Quirk Classics.