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The Mansion: A Novel
The Mansion: A Novel
The Mansion: A Novel
Audiobook13 hours

The Mansion: A Novel

Written by Ezekiel Boone

Narrated by George Newbern

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

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).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 4, 2018
ISBN9781508260356
Author

Ezekiel Boone

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.

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Reviews for The Mansion

Rating: 3.7135922330097086 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

103 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    TW: Rape, abuse

    Honestly I went into this not expecting much, just a fun smart house thriller with some tech plot thrown in. But it's very far from that. The house is a secondary character at best and it's only a plot point by the end of the novel. This is essentially The Shining fanfic, with some lines ripped straight off it (e.g Come here and take your medicine)

    There are some really unnecessary graphic scenes to establish what a crappy childhood our brave main character went through that I ended up skipping over.

    All in all, mostly a waste of time, read at your own peril. 4.2/10

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nicely written, just alittle long winded, but a nice story

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nothing really new or exciting. A bit redundant. But Iit was something to listen to. The one about the spiders was better. ( hatching skitter zero)

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's like the shining with a high tech twist. With characters you like added into the mix.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I never write reviews but this book was fantastically boring and extremely anticlimactic. I wish I could get these several hours of my life back. It had serious potential and then went absolutely freaking nowhere and at times was just downright frustrating
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    So, from a screenwriter elevator pitch perspective, The Mansion is a modernized retelling of The Shining. It's the Overlook Hotel with Alexa's brain, and Alexa's brain isn't happy. From a screenwriting perspective, this is a goldmine of an idea, imho. It's even a great idea for a novel, and being a fan of Stephen King's work, in particular a fan of The Shining, I was genuinely excited to read Boone's approach on it.There are good things in Boone's story, but I was honestly a little bit disappointed. For me, it felt like the numerous bits that I'm assuming were meant to make the reader wax nostalgic for King's classic work, fell flat. There was the mansion itself, and there was the main protagonist struggling with alcohol addiction. There were creepy twins and a sordid history of the things people did in the mansion's heyday. There was a maze and a hatchet--forgive me, a maul. The was a child being confronted by a monster who used to be a man. There were a ton of visual queues to make us remember King's book/Kubrick's movie, although Boone was clever enough to tweak their significance to make it all not quite the same.But that's all they amounted to, visual reminders of the old, and not necessarily elements that helped tie the new story together. I felt like the new story, which has potential in its own right, was underdeveloped because of time taken to pay homage to The Shining. And I'm sorry to say it, I felt like Boone spent too much time rehashing the past and regurgitating pieces of character back stories instead of building up to the suspenseful final act. There were too many moments of me saying to myself, "I get it. I don't need to read multiple creative ways to say it to get it. Let's move on." For me, this is an indicator that the writer was stuck; we see the spinning hamster wheel of information to keep the fingers busy while the brain tries to work the next step out. I've been there (anyone who writes anything has been there).I liked the ending. I wish we had better development of the influence of the third man, and that's all I'm going to mention to avoid spoilers. I wish the relationship between the man and his creation had given the protagonist more conflict in his life. There could have been a visceral struggle with madness going on that was left untapped (or was maybe only scratched at the surface...), although the potential was set up for it.Overall, at least for me, I give The Mansion a 3. Maybe a 3.5, but with the 5 star system being what it is, it amounts to a 3.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Mansion is being marketed as a "white-knuckle thriller." I'm not sure who's defining thrillers these days, but this is not one.We have: a wealthy, arrogant male, a bitter alcoholic male, and a female whose sole point of existence is as the woman both men want. The content is repetitive and dull. We're told incessantly that the man is rich, the other man is an alcoholic because the rich man screwed him, and the woman is sad and worried.Chapter titles such as "In Which Emily Wiggins Takes a Nap" and "Aunt Emily is Sad" are perfect examples of the book's tone and pacing.At around the 30% mark, we arrive at the "haunted house" and "Nellie" makes a limited first appearance. Something happens, finally, that should have been a huge talking point for the alcoholic and the rich guy, but it's brushed aside by one and ignored by the other. And, so, they return to their inner monologues, rehashing all the things they've been dwelling on since page one.I stopped reading.*I received a free ebook copy via Simon and Schuster's newsletter.*
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Before writing this book, he should have taken less time reading The Shining and more time reading up on the difference between schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Maybe work in some time on how to tie things together and create something that works as a whole, because this book did not. Seemed like a lot of promise but none of the setups really panned out. You've got a ghost in the machine, possible regular ghosts in a haunted house, a secret murder, a bloody family history, a love triangle...and yet none of that really seems to fit together. The ending felt very tacked-on and anticlimactic.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Some authors have great editors, others don't. Some authors think they know more than their editors; they really shouldn't. Case in point: The Mansion which reads more like a high school endeavor dusted off to capitalize on the success of Boone's Hatching Trilogy. To be clear, the Hatching books were so pedal-to-the-metal fun that I could hardly wait to read The Mansion. And to be honest, there might have been a compelling novel here except... well, editors and such, and the fact that I'd finished the entire trilogy AND a 700-page book on Appalachia by the time I managed to drag myself through the tedium just to reach the halfway point here. It shouldn't ruin anything if I just tell you upfront that Shawn Eagle is really, really, really rich.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ezekiel Boone gave me the heebie jeebies with his Hatching trilogy. (Spiders, giant spiders....) He returns with a new creepy thiller called The Mansion. And it's really quite timely....Shawn and Billy were programming partners as young men. They created Eagle Logic - a brilliant system. But Shawn walked away with all the money when Billy walked away with Emily - Shawn's girlfriend. Billy hasn't fared so well - he's a recovering alcoholic, he's in debt and he and Emily are arguing. When Shawn offers up the chance to resurrect one of their failed projects - and pay Billy handsomely - he takes the job. They'll work out of Shawn's isolated mansion. And the project? It's named Nellie. And Nellie is "a next-generation computer program that can control a house’s every function."And I'm not giving away much when I say you can see the possibilities can't you? And the realities from current news stories of technology gone wrong.....The main plot didn't really surprise me. Boone takes a bit of a long path to the actual scary stuff. The tale is fleshed out with lots of detail and back story. A bit too much in my opinion. I wanted to get to the good stuff with Nellie. I think if I had read a physical copy, I might have been skim reading some of those passages.But....I chose to listen to The Mansion and I quite enjoyed the audio version. In great part to the narrator. George Newbern is a perennial favorite reader of mine. He has the most expressive voice and brings an author's work to life with his inflections, timber and tone. His voice is clear, easy to understand and pleasant to listen to. He changes things up for each character and it is easy to know who is speaking. Another five star performance for Newbern.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Mansion by Ezekiel Boone due December 2018 Emily.Bestler. Books/ Atria BooksBilly Stafford and Shawn Eagle were best friends who spent much time together growing up, in a cabin in a remote area, developing computer hardware. They formed a company, Eagle Logic that differed from other artificial intelligence systems, this was a next generation intelligence system that could follow commands, but also could read your mind and anticipate your responses. Like a mind-reading Siri or Alexa. Things were going well....the company was thriving and they both were looking forward to a successful future. Until they both fell in love Emily. Shawn dated her first, but Billy married her and Shawn took Eagle Logic as his own, developing it into a multi-billion dollar computer company, worth more than Google or Amazon. And Billy was struggling, became addicted to alcohol and pills and Emily stood by him.So it was awkward when Shawn contacted Billy. He would zero out his debt, which was substantial if he would help him develop "Nellie", the name he gave his artificial intelligence device. Nellie has a glitch and Billy can fix it. Billy is suspicious. Why now? What is really going on? I really enjoyed this well paced book. The Nest and Eagle Logic were well done and fascinating, my favorite part of the book.Thanks to Emily. Bestler Books/ Atria for this e-ARC.#netgalley
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had this book on my tbr list but bumped it up when a fellow reader raved about this book. Thus, I could not want to read this book. The story started out fine. The author did a good job of describing the dynamic relationship that Billy, Shawn, and Emily shared together. It was a bit of a tangled web. In the beginning I got an idea of just what type of AI, Nellie was when the construction workers were sharing stories of incidents that had taken place while building the mansion. However, there was not enough Nellie for me. She appeared when Billie arrived in the house. The way she interacted with him versus with Shawn; did tell me that she had a "crush" on Billie. Yet, other mysterious events did not transpire until later in the book. I do agree that the idea of an AI controlled house is not ideal. Example: I read an article where an Alexa device turned on by itself and started playing music. The problem is that it was about 2 am and the owners were not home. The police were called where they broke the door down because no one was home. This book for me did not hit the "sweet" spot like my friend. However, there was something there within the pages of this book that did have me intrigued. I would read another book from this author.