Mood: Tired, Slightly Disenchanted
Music: Accelerate, by REM
I finished Android Karenina today. It was produced by Quirk Books, which also produced Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to great reception amongst obscure literary circles. Ben H. Winters, the mash up author of this work, did a stunning job of converting Tolstoy's descriptions of early Russia into a bustling SteamPunk paradise.Gone are the starchy upper class people wandering about with parasols. Gone are the coal fired trains, the domestic servants, and the villainous Tsar Alexi Alexandrovich. In their place are the by far more awesome hovering "grav" trains, companion robots designed to mimic their masters, and in place of the book's corrupted Alexi, we now enjoy the despicable mannerisms of "THE FACE".
"THE FACE" is, in fact, a mechanical face grafted onto Alexi's. So that rather than being corrupted by the inner turmoil of early Russian politics, he is corrupted by a mechanical oculus bearing face that speaks into his mind.
There are also aliens, trips to the moon, androids, artificial limbs, and more robots than one could count. The book was excellent, I thought it extremely good. Why not read it for yourself?
