William
An up-all-night slice of Halloween horror for fans of Stephen King, Black Mirror, and Frankenstein
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- 42,00 kr
Publisher Description
*An AI twist on Frankenstein. Perfect for fans of Stephen King and Black Mirror*
'Best thing I've read this year' Will Dean
'Terrifying' Kiran Millwood Hargrave
'A brilliantly plotted story' Guardian
'Gripping . . . A twist on The Shining' New York Times
'Its chilling final twist will have you turning directly back to the first page' Mail on Sunday
Henry, a brilliant but reclusive engineer, has achieved the crowning discovery of his career: he's created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He names the half-formed robot William.
But there's something strange about William.
It's not that his skin feels like balloon rubber and is the colour of curdled milk, nor is it his thick gurgling laugh or the way his tongue curls towards his crooked top teeth. It is the way he looks at Henry's wife, Lily.
Henry created William but he is starting to lose control of him. As William's fixation with Lily grows and threatens to bring harm to their house, Henry has no choice but to destroy William.
But William isn't gone. Filled with jealousy for humanity, for its capacity to love and create life, William starts to haunt the house.
He lurks behind each locked door. You can hear him muttering in the eaves of the attic. He is whispering in Henry's head. And he will be the one to take control . . .
Readers are loving William:
'Nothing prepared me for the final twist' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'A weird and wonderful book' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Creepy, terrifying and has a killer twist that I did not see coming' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Truly scary and unpredictable! What a brilliant book' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'An addictive read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
