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Title details for William by Mason Coile - Available

William

by Mason Coile
Honey St. Dennis
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Psychological horror meets cyber noir in this delicious one-sitting read—a haunted house story in which the haunting is by AI.
Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career—he’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William.
No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily.
When Lily’s coworkers show up, wanting to finally meet Henry and see the new house—the smartest of smart homes—Henry decides to introduce them to William, and things go from strange to much worse. Soon Henry and Lily discover the security upgrades intended to keep danger out of the house are even better at locking it in.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 10, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593912300
      • File size: 144557 KB
      • Duration: 05:01:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 8, 2024
      A smart home turns into a house of horrors in this suspenseful outing from Coile (Oracle, written as Andrew Pyper). Henry, a robotics engineer, and his wife, Lily, a software company founder, are living in the “fantasy of the Upstate College Town.” When Lily’s friends Davis and Paige stop by for brunch, Henry—an agoraphobe with self-esteem issues—decides to show them the robot he has been building. William, the robot, is smart and articulate, but so indifferent to the danger his aggressive behavior poses to the pregnant Lily and her guests that Henry tries dismantling him—whereupon William appears to flex his will through the home’s integrated security system to imprison the quartet. Coile expertly imagines the sort of ghoulish snares a cybernetic environment could spring upon its unprepared captives and throws in a late-inning explanation for the source of William’s apparent sociopathy that is as believable as it is chilling. It’s a frightening Frankenstein fable for the age of AI.

    • Library Journal

      December 6, 2024

      Robotics engineer Henry's agoraphobia keeps him in the house he shares with his pregnant wife, Lily. When Lily's coworkers want to meet Henry's latest invention, a half-formed AI robot named William, the couple invite them to their cybernetically fortified smart home. The guests are stunned when William begins speaking to them as if he has his own thoughts and feelings. As the evening proceeds, the gathering takes a sinister turn, and the safety features of this smart house unleash terrors on them all. Honey St. Dennis narrates Coile's (Oracle, written as Andrew Pyper) latest, a twist on the haunted-doll horror trope. St. Dennis captures the novel's creeping dread, conveying the claustrophobic terror as Henry and Lily desperately try to escape the house, survive the night, and end the dangers lurking within the terrifyingly clever robot. While the story is slow to gain momentum, listeners will be rewarded with a riveting, suspenseful tale and a shocking ending once the pace gains traction. VERDICT Coile's nightmarish cyber-horror thrums with tension and unexpected horrific surprises. Fans of Ezekiel Boone's The Mansion will want to dive in.--Elyssa Everling

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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