REVIEW: The Mansion

The Mansion
Author: Ezekiel Boone

Years ago two friends had a falling out. One went on to become a tech mogul billionaire. And the other became a drunk. A project they worked on before they went their separate ways -- a very complex AI program they named Nellie -- is now almost a reality. Shawn Eagle -- owner of Eagle Technology -- needs his old friend (or is frenemy more correct?) Billy to come tweak the program. When Shawn installed Her at the now refurbished Eagle Mansion for a trial run, Nellie had some pretty severe glitches. It seems she has a mind of her own.....And it's not a healthy one. Does she turn the mansion into a futuristic smarthouse? Yep. But she's also got evil and murder lurking in her source code.

I love this book! Great mix of techie coolness and creepy suspense! I just like Boone's writing and story telling skills. He scared the crap out of me previously with his The Hatching trilogy (Giant angry super spiders.... AHHHHHHHHHHH!) and definitely gave me the creeps all over again in this tale of a smarthouse gone horribly wrong. Nicely done! I am definitely re-thinking my constant whining about how Siri, Alexa and other available AI programs just aren't as functional as I would like. I think Nellie might be just a bit too high functioning. I think I'd rather my AIs stick to knock knock jokes after reading this story. Nobody dies from bad jokes.

Dark hidden secrets. Jealousies. Hatred. Revenge. Deception & lies. Betrayal. Greed. Bad choices. Technology run amok. This tale has a bit of everything. The pacing is perfect, keeping the suspense going until the very end. The characters are completely F'd up....which makes them perfect for the story. And the ending......yikes! Loved it!

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Atria Books via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own. 01001110 01101111 00100000 01000001 01001001 00100000 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01101101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110110 01101001 01100101 01110111 00101110**