The Chess Machine

The Chess Machine, set in the late 1700s is a thrilling tale with very vivid period detail. The story is about Wolfgang von Kemplen who builds a famed chess machine to impress the crown. Little do people know that the real genius behind the automaton nick-named "Turk", is his little friend Tibor. The tour the country challenging and defeating king and pauper alike. The plot takes a turn with the "Turk" is accused of murdering royalty at a ball. The author moves his characters like chess pieces giving them purpose and more importantly, conscience. The leading pieces are morally torn between the power of fame and money and the guilt of deception. The story is gripping and very well paced. The detail is very meticulous and lends itself very well for a motion picture adaptation.

Like the device this story is about, this book is like an intricate mechanism that has cogwheels turning the pages, springs to keep the reader in the lurch, pullies that tug the reader along without pause. It has many gears for continuous movement from start to finish. The Chess Machine offers the reader a lighthearted fun frolic through Europe in the late 1700s as we learn the story that is based on the true life invention of the Mechanical Turk. The Turk was an automaton chess playing machine invented by Wolfgang Kempelen who created this mechanical marvel and took Europe by storm taking it on the road to entertain the wealthy and the royal. This is a creative novel with a plot and story different than the norm and offers the reader many hours of pure reading enjoyment. We have great characters, a creative story, good writing and many well thought out side plots that twist and turn. There are few slow spots but basically the story moves along at a good pace, never predictable and has a few surprises that come at you rather sudden to leave you stunned. There is great character development for a few of the key players and the author blends sincere human emotions with constant conflicting morals and values to allow them to come alive on paper. I thoroughly enjoyed the ingenuity of this novel and felt it a breath of fresh air to read something out of the ordinary. This is a very visual story, very colorful with vivid historical costumed scenes and lavish backdrops. Because of that I think it would make a splendid film as well. This is truly a wonderful debut novel and I eagerly await another book from the author.

This is a very entertaiment book. The plot is not a top 5 story, but is easy to read and does not have any hole. If you are looking for a very adictive novel, this is not for you, but if you don't have any plan about what to read, then this book will do its work: easy read, funny, curious and at the end of the book the author will give you the real story about the Turk.

A chess playing automaton. A dwarf. A murder most fowl. Imprisoned in mind and body. Add to that that The Chess Machine is a smart, well-written delight. How can you go wrong?

The Chess Machine is based on actual events that occurred during 1770 in Pressburg, what is today the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. During an era in which science and entertainment were still closely related, the Habsburg Empire became enthralled with Wolfgang von Kempelen's unexpected invention, a chess-playing automation that became known as the Mechanical Turk. This machine, fronted by a turban-wearing "mechanical Turk" who moved his own chess pieces with a life-like right arm and hand easily defeated the best chess players it encountered in exhibition matches around the empire. Kemplen's invention brought him instant fame and seemed certain to also bring him his fortune. After all, he had invented the first machine that was capable of thought, a machine that could, in fact, think better than the human beings it encountered. But, as many of Kemplen's scientific rivals suspected, the Mechanical Turk was too good to be true. Rather than having created a thinking machine, Kemplen had instead built an automation that depended entirely on the chess-playing dwarf who was hidden inside the wooden box housing the useless clockworks that appeared to make the machine work. Tibor Scardenelli, the Italian dwarf, hired by Kemplen to be the brains of his machine, is a remarkable chess player but he soon begins to tire of the secret life he is forced to live. Tibor comes to feel that he is living a prisoner's life, always locked away in one room of Kemplen's home or inside the chess machine itself. For the sake of keeping the illusion of a chess-playing automation alive, no one can be allowed to know of his existence. Despite Tibor's growing uneasiness with the scam that he is so large a part of, everything goes well for the chess machine until one of Kemplen's court rivals manages to place his lover, Galatea, into the Kemplen household as a spy. In time, Galatea, known to Kemplen as his house servant Elise, comes to know the truth. But Kemplen and his team have bigger problems than Elise. After a performance at the ball celebrating the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, a young countess is found dead. There are no witnesses to her death but she has left traces of her rouge on the Turk's face, and many come to believe that the Turk has seduced and murdered the woman. Especially taken with this notion is the young woman's brother who is determined to take revenge on the Turk and its owner. Much like one of his own chess pieces, Wolfgang von Kemplen soon finds himself being pushed into defensive moves that require more and more ruthlessness on his part. His Mechanical Turk comes to own him in a way that he never owned the Turk. Robert Lohr's The Chess Machine is filled with the level of period detail and unforgettable characters that can make historical fiction so rewarding. But at the same time this is a novel full of adventure and psychological insights, one with a story that will stay with the reader for a long time.