[2] The novel is a mashup, adding steampunk elements to the Russian 19th-century environment of Anna Karenina, a book first published in 1877.

The book has the same main couples as Tolstoy's – Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, and Kitty Shcherbatskaya and Konstantin Levin.

Eventually, the robots revolt against the humans, leading the latter to create ultra-human cyborgs to fight back.

Winters previously wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) with Jane Austen, another parody novel.

[3] Ron Hogan of Den of Geeks acknowledged the clever reinterpretation of the original story, admitting that the steampunk/Tolstoy combination works, and calling the book a "definitive mash-up novel".