The Mansion: A Novel

Ezekiel Boone

Dec 2018 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

When a family moves into a remote high-tech mansion equipped with next-generation artificial intelligence that can control the house’s every function—a buried secret leads to terrifying and catastrophic consequences.

Nellie is programmed to be the perfect digital assistant. But something sinister lurks in her source code—and now she’s the perfect killer.

When Billy Stafford and his wife move into their house designed with every comfort in mind, he thinks it will be the perfect chance to work on their marriage and to restart his career. A brilliant computer engineer fallen on hard times, Billy’s been hired by his former business partner to test out Nellie: a cutting-edge artificial intelligence program hardwired into the house. All Billy has to do is fix a few bugs in the system, which sounds easy enough.

But as winter settles in and Billy and his wife are left alone in the woods, a dark reality begins to emerge. Nellie’s problems are much worse than a few technology glitches. Infused with the sinister history of the mansion and her own creator’s sins, she has, in fact, become a killing machine. And the only way to escape is to give her what she wants…

A gripping technothriller about AI gone rogue, The Mansion is “a thrilling story that combines modern technology with old fears” (Shelf Awareness).

Ratings and reviews

With technology growing by leaps and bounds, the possibilities are endless - phones that are way too smart, creepy toys that "learn," cars that drive themselves, the list goes on and on. With that in mind, The Mansion certainly piqued my interest. The idea is not entirely new. It's been done in one form or another in movies and books, but just the thought of a house with Nellie's capabilities gives me the willies. That said, this one did have that, but it doesn't entirely deliver on the horror aspect. It's way too slow to be what I would consider scary. We do get a few chills, but so much of the story is repetitive, plus we get tons of backstory by way of info dumps, and lengthy descriptions of everything - and I do mean everything. Granted, some of the backstory is relevant to the here and now, but a lot felt more like filler, dragging the story along. What it all amounts to is a lot of information with a creepy tidbit here and there. Considering what the blurb suggests, this story doesn't have nearly enough of Nellie, who is the most interesting character in the story. It does pick up in the last third or so of the book, but by that point, it's too little, too late to save it for me, and the conclusion is a bit too easy to predict.

Had me hooked. Edge of your seat read.

About the author

Ezekiel Boone lives in upstate New York with his wife and children. He is the internationally bestselling author of The Hatching, Skitter, and Zero Day.