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William - Mason Coile - 2024
By: Mason Coile
Narrated by: Honey St. Dennis
Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 09-10-24
Categories: Literature & Fiction, Horror
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Format: mp3 64/48 stereo
Psychological horror meets cyber noir in this delicious one-sitting listen—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.
©2024 Mason Coile (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Critic reviews
“A smart home turns into a house of horrors in this suspenseful outing from Coile… 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.” –Publishers Weekly
“Moments of this cinematic tale truly terrify… Coile maximizes his premise’s inherent tension using nightmare imagery and an uneasy third-person-present narration shot through with powerlessness, paranoia, and dread. Gleefully lurid fun.” –Kirkus Reviews
“A wickedly fast cyber-thriller. Much of the action consists of William’s prisoners either dying horribly or testing their confines, a scenario that hearkens back to the trope where technology grows smarter and therefore more sinister. A late-act reveal helps this story stand out among other technology-going-bad tales, and those who like the trope, or enjoy a good techno-thriller, will want to watch William play with his human toys.” –Library Journal
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