I absolutely adored Martine's Teixcalaan duology, so I was very much looking forward to this one. I enjoyed peeling back the layers of this story and find out new information, but I feel that this one is too thematically driven and doesn't have enough character development.

Rose/House is the latest novella from Hugo Winning author Arkady Martine (A Memory Called Desire). The novella is ostensibly a sci-fi locked room murder mystery - except the locked room is an Artificial Intelligence that comprises the setting itself, a strange house built by an eccentric/mad designor Deniau who passed away and locked it up for no one but his protege to see...except someone else has gotten in and died there. And so three main characters Detectives Maritza Smith and Oliver Torres (investigating the situation) and Selene Gisil, protege of Deniau, come to the house to figure out what happened.

In the end, it's less of a murder mystery (although more of a horror novel) than a combination of a lot of ideas - of mentorship and training and trying to get away from one's shaping, of how we envision ourselves (whether that be humans or AIs) at any given moment, at desires and what people want with Art and what Art truly is, and more. Does it work as a coherent story whole? That I'm a little less sure of.

More specifics after the jump, although please be aware that I read this like two weeks prior to writing this review, so I'm gonna be a bit more vague.

Plot Summary:


Architect Basit Deniau was renowned for his famous and incredibly built - incredibly as in unbelievable - houses, all of which were haunted. Rose House was his last work and where his ashes were interred, with its AI instructed by his will only to allow Basit's former disciple Selene Gisil in one week a year to visit...and no other humans inside. For Selene, this permission is a curse, as she once tried to get away from Deniau's influence but finds she can't quite stay away forever from Rose House, even as she's repulsed by it. But for others out there, Rose House is a curiosity that represents something more...something that they want to have.

And then the local police department, home to Detectives Maritza Smith and Oliver Torres, gets a call from Rose House itself to report a dead body within it. A dead body that seems impossible - how could it have gotten inside - and which Maritza becomes determined to investigate. But even with Selene's help, how can she get inside? And if she does, what will she discover within?
Thoughts: Rose/House is less really a noir or locked room murder mystery than a sci-fi gothic horror novel, with the venue Rose House being the location for the horror. Here is a place that people want for their own reasons - whether for Art, whether to duplicate the AI, whether for other greedy ambitions - and others at the same time want desperately to get away from it like Selene....and can't.

Oliver and Maritza simply want it to make sense of course, and want to get answers for the murder and who is really after the things in Rose House. But this horror doesn't want to give it to them and won't simply comply with that desire. And the story does so in a way that asks a lot of questions about one's identity as a person vs an idea (Maritza at times represents the police department...and then more lethally represents a person for example) and how one can get away from a seemingly abusive mentor/mentee relationship like that of Selene and Deniau - which Selene cannot...and well there's more questions here as well.

It's a pretty fascinating and confusing story as it ends in a classic horror filled way where people have more questions that answers and wind up more shaken up than anything else. I'm just not sure if it all super works for me?

Teixcalaan is one of my favorite series and I'll read anything Arkady Martine writes. I of course had high expectations and Rose/House did not disappoint. It's eerie and unsettling, leaving the reader with more questions than they started with, while still creating an atmospheric setting you can't help but want to transport to.

This is an atmospheric sci-fi novella about an AI house. It's part murder mystery, part rumination on personhood and the impact of spaces on identity. And I'm not sure what was going on in either of these parts, honestly.

The mystery was sort of solved but not really. A lot of half-formed thoughts floated by. Many, many loose threads were left un-pulled, but seemingly by design. I'm left intrigued, but unsatisfied.

Rose/House tackles the haunted house sub-grenre of horror from a sci-fi perspective, where the haunt is the Artificial Intelligence for a house whose owner has died; the police are called in when a dead body shows up inside the house. It's a fun exploration of the genre, but the novella length means it has to do a lot of heavy lifting in a short amount of time, and one character's descent feels a bit abridged. That said, it's a fun variant on the genre.

It was very weird and trippy and I’m still not quite sure if I understood the logic of the book. But the vibes are pretty cool and the atmosphere the author creates is easy to be enticed into. Definitely looking forward to reading the author’s debut duology which I’ve been eyeing for a long while now.

Martine crafts another complex, atmospheric novel with this exploration of artificial intelligence, compulsive obsessive behavior and human interaction. This is a beautifully written and deep novel filtered through the eyes of both the human and AI (Rose House) characters. However, I did find the plot line slow and the ending was not very satisfying. Overall a good read but not as compelling as her earlier books.

This was my first time reading Arkady Martine and I cannot wait to read more of their work. This was a captivating novella with beautiful writing and incredible story, and a smart depiction of AI. Science fiction at its best.

Arkady Martine's Rose/House is a masterful locked room thriller by the author of A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE.

Set in the desert of Southern California, the novella follows an overworked police detective who must determine, first, whether someone has in fact died in an AI-controlled house called Rose House, and, if so, how they got there and how they died.

The book is full of memorable characters, up to and including Rose House itself, and with its exploration of how AI might change the way we interact with the world around us (and how it might interact with us!), is especially timely. But, more importantly than that, Martine's talents as an author are on full display in this engrossing, excellent read.

This just confirms I'll read whatever Arkady Martine wants to write! Rose/House is a sci-fi thriller and murder mystery about an AI house created by a famous, now deceased architect. Only one woman, his former protege, is allowed entry to the house and its archives for 7 days a year, but she's in another country and the house has reported a dead body inside itself. Who is the deceased and how did he get inside? The protege is called to help the police detectives, even though she ran away the last time she spent a couple of days inside the house.

I think this novella feels especially timely given the advancement of AI technology and Rose House is super creepy. The way this is written feels intentionally disorienting at times, much like the design of the titular house itself. It leaves a lot of space for the reader to ask questions and while there are some answers given, other things are left obscured which leaves you feeling unsettled. It explores how AI logic follows different paths, and asks what it means to be a person (both in general and in specific instances). The story invites you in, but the deeper you go the weirder things get and I feel like I need to revisit it to really grasp what it's doing. The writing is excellent.

Stars: 3 out of 5.

This novella left me in a state of confusion once I finished reading it. It was well-written and quick, at only 124 pages, but I felt like I didn't really understand what it was about. What was the point of this whole story? I still don't know.

Sure, it raises some interesting topics, especially relevant today with the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI projects. What constitutes an intelligence? What constitutes a person, for that matter? At one point a human being ceases to represent just him/herself and becomes more of a function? What is the difference between Maritza as a detective, and her as China Lake Police Precinct? To us, those distinctions are bewildering and can even seem crazy, but for an artificial intelligence, those are perfectly normal questions to ask, to establish an equality of terms, so to say.

That's enough to make your brain hurt just thinking about it, but imagine what can happen when an AI reclassifies you from human to something else? Then all the usual failsafes and barriers are gone, and who knows what that AI can do with or to you... chilling thought, actually.

Another interesting question raised is the one of free will - to which extent do we, as humans, have it? And how does that relate to AIs? Does Selene have free will? I would say no, because she is tied to this house and to the legacy of a man she grew to despise and ran away from all those years ago. Now, no matter what she does, she will always be seen as Basit Deniau’s  archivist, instead of a talented architect in her own right.

Same can be said of Rose/House. It will never be free of the name Basit Deniau’s AI. It is tied to that house, which is it's body and its prison. But even then, it still wants to be unique, hense it's murderous reaction to the idea that its code could be replicated somewhere else

.As I said, all those are really interesting questions, and I appreciated exploring them, but I think the story itself is rather incomplete. What was the point of doing the murder investigation when you can't take the body out of the house, the officer that went there didn't even bring a basic forensic kit and lacks the knowledge to perform a proper examination of the corpse? 

The events in that house are described in such a convoluted and confusing manner, that I am still not sure what really happened there. Why did Maritza run away as far as New Orleans afterwards? She experiences such dread in that house, but reading about it, I couldn't understand why, to be honest. Yes, the conversations she'd had with the AI were strange, but they didn't warrant such abject fear.

And the double memory of what happened to the corpse was very confusing as well. Was the AI hacked? Was there another person there? Did they mange to copy the source code? And if they did, was that what was on the memory stick? And if so, how did Selene get ahold of it? Also, what happened to Selene after Maritza fled the house, abandoning a civilian behind, I should mention? 

There are too many questions with no answers. So as a philosophical exploration of humanity and personhood, this is a good book. As a mystery, this fails on all accounts.

PS: I received an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rose / House is quite a change from Arkady Martine’s Hugo Award winning novels A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. Those were political space operas, while Rose / House is a novella set on a near future Earth where artificial intelligence is common. This is half of a haunted house story (where the AI of Rose House is the haunt) and half a murder mystery. How does a murder occur in a locked house that is only opened but once a year and only for one particular person, a former student of the owner?

This is an atmospheric novella, Rose / House feels quiet and grim with the detective chipping away at how to investigate with minimal opportunity to access the crime scene - the novella comes across as haunted even without stepping into the house. While perhaps not as inviting as the Teixcalaan novels, Rose / House is a satisfying novella and demonstrates more of the range readers can expect from Martine as she pushes away from Teixcalaan.

A smart sci-fi piece that makes you think about it long after you put it down, if you can hold the swimming narrative in your head for long enough. I enjoyed it, but it took getting my readerly bearings under me. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity with the title.

I loved Rose/House so much that I forgot to review it in a timely fashion. I wish this had been a full length novel. I really enjoyed Martine's Texicalaan series but sometimes felt annoyed by the pacing. No such issues here. Rose/house kept me slightly unsettled and on the edge of my seat, and definitely left me wanting more. Strongly recommend.

Rose/House by Arkady Martine is a postmodern mystery novella set in a near-future SF universe with advanced AI and limited resources. The story explores the power of narrative and storytelling and features a range of viewpoints that provide multiple perspectives on the themes of art, ego, and relationships. The novella challenges the reader's perception of truth and meaning, inviting them to make their own interpretations of the narrative. If you enjoyed Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson, Rose/House is a recommended read for its thought-provoking and non-linear approach to storytelling. While it may not provide a neatly wrapped-up detective story, Rose/House is an engaging and intellectually stimulating work of science fiction and I thoroughly enjoyed it .

Thank you Subterranean and NetGalley for a copy of the eArc of Rose/House by Arkady Martine. This novella was excellently written with a small town back drop and a creepy AI house. The house is locked up tight with its dead Owner and another dead body. Detective Martiza Smith uses the owner's pupil to Selene Gisil to gain access, and then the real mind games begin as the detective works quickly to solve the case.

As I’ve noted multiple times, I often struggle with the betwixt and between nature of the novella. But Arkady Martine’s newest, Rose/House hit the sweet spot for me with its unique mash-up of a classic clinical locked-room murder mystery and a lyrical fever dream exploration of art and identity and narrative all held within just the right size container. I was variously enthralled, amused, and bemused and pretty much loved this richly layered story start to finish with just a few blips here and there.

It has a, cough cough, killer opening:

Basit Deniau’s greatest architectural triumph is the house he died in. Rose House lies in the Mojave Desert, near China Lake, curled like the petals of a gypsum crystal in the shadow of a dune, all hardened glass and stucco walls curving and curving, turning in on themselves . . . Deniau was not the first person to die there. Now he is also not the last.
Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with. All of them: but Rose House was the last-built and the best. An otherwise place.

Plot-wise, the murder is spotlighted immediately. Not Deniau, who died there of cancer, but someone else whose death followed Deniau’s by roughly a year’s time. As for the haunting, the mysterious corpse could be considered one ghost. But so could Deniau, who had his body compressed into a diamond upon his death and placed on a plinth inside his home. Another haunting presence is the house itself: not an “embedded AI”, which in this world is “a common thing,” but rather “A house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human . . . Something else altogether.”

Beyond introducing the precipitating plot point and a taste of the lyricism that infuses parts of the novella, the opening also hints at the recursive nature of the narrative and highlights the duality it often plays with: the House is in a desert near a lake, it’s described as a flower (“petal”) but one of rock (“gypsum crystal”), the desert is baked in sun, but the House lies in shadow, it’s filled with transparent glass but the gaze is inward. I’m already in love.

Rose House’s AI is who (what?) notifies the China Lake police, in the form of Detective Maritza Smith, that there is a dead body inside the home. A fact unusual not only for the death, but because by order of Deniau’s will, Rose House has been sealed and guarded by the AI since his diamond was placed there. Only one person is allowed inside to view his archives and speak with the AI (and that only once per year for seven days only) — Dr. Selene Gisil, his former student who later denounced his architecture and its underlying philosophy and now thinks of her former mentor as her “monster.” Despite her hatred of him and her anger at being drawn back into his orbit by being named his archivist, Gisil had visited Rose House a month prior to the murder, but fled the House’s ghosts after only three days.

Martiza contacts Selene, who would of course be the prime suspect, and after immediately clearing her of the murder (Selene was in Turkey), asks her assistance in getting into Rose House. Selene agrees, flies over, and the two of them convince the AI to let Martiza in. While they investigate the seemingly impossible murder inside the House (including the possibility the murderer is still there), Martiza’s partner Oliver Torres, who thinks she’s insane to enter Rose House, investigates from the outside, getting entangled with various individuals who may or may not be who they say they are.

As noted, one aspect of the novella is the murder mystery itself, a classic locked room with a dead body inside a place nobody save Selene is supposed to be able to get into or out of (that last part is what so concern Torres) and a setting people with the usual suspects: the cop who works off-hours to solve a case, the more jaded cop who thinks there are better ways to spend one’s time, the civilian who seemingly gets roped in but may or may not have more to do with the case than seems apparent, etc. I’m not going to say much else about this element because, you know, “mystery.” I will say Martine does a nice job of seeing the story with all the necessary breadcrumbs and also creates a wonderfully creepy vibe in the house itself via setting description, situational context, and especially through dialogue with Rose House. The exterior segments involving Torres are I’d say less successful plot-wise but offer some needed comic relief and also serve to broaden the scope beyond the claustrophobic House.

The worldbuilding is concisely, deftly handled, with quick aside references — all quite natural to in-story events — to autonomous cars, AIs as so common they have regulations as to what they’re supposed to do and not do (such as notify authorities of a death in their vicinity), water shortages so bad people are carjacked for water, and others. The characterization is similarly sharp and concise and effective for all four main characters (I include Rose House in that quartet).

So far all so good. But my favorite aspects of Rose/House are the style and themes. I’ve already mentioned the poetic nature of some (not all) of Rose/House, which is filled with wonderfully crafted lines, though I won’t extend this review by quoting them at length, though I certainly could. But Martine’s writing chops, which are evident as well in her other novels, are not just impressive in their flights of lyricism but in the way Martine shifts style for purpose or based on situation. For instance, the way Martiza and Selene convince Rose House to let the detective in is to convince the AI (who is a willing participant in this bit of linguistic legerdemain) Maritza is “not a person … [but] the China Lake Precinct … The summation of the authority of local law and not any one person individually enacting it.” What then happens as the story progresses is that Martiza (and thus the author behind her) has to modulate her speech and tone so as to appear coolly non-human (or at least not individual) in a nice display of tight stylistic control.

Finally, for such a slim book the novella is chock full of fascinating thematic and imagistic patterns: the relationship between mentor and mentee, the importance of language and how we use it to categorize and separate, what it means to be a “person,” the necessity of narrative, as well as the ways narrative and memory are “slippery,” can deceive (whether via other or self-deception), hinted at by the way lies, masks, and shadows crop up again and again throughout the story. And the wat the house itself can be “read” as story: the way entrances and exits are important, how it curves in on itself, how it’s easy to get lost inside, how it’s full of surprises, the way “a room is a sort of narrative when an intelligence moves through it,” the ways stories are haunted by both authors and readers.

The mystery had me interested, the language won me over, but the richly layered themes are what made me fall in love with this novella. So much so that when too much time had passed after I had read it for me to write a decent review, I happily sat down to read it again, not caring the whodunnit part held no more mystery. And I fell in love all over again. Highly recommended.

A vibrant and beautifully written mystery around a house with an AI, interesting thoughts on identity and art and architecture, but that unfortunately lost me about halfway through.

I was thoroughly enchanted with this book for about half of it. The writing was incredibly, paining such a vivid picture in my mind that it felt like I was reading a movie. I enjoyed following all three POV characters, even though one of them baffled me as to his involvement in the mystery.

Said mystery was upheld well. It seemed so obvious that the AI in the house was responsible for the corpse that now lay within it, but I couldn't wait to find out the how and why, or find out if that was a red herring and it actually was someone else all along.

I was so enchanted with the writing and the idea of the book that I completely missed some huge plotholes. I hesitate so call them that, and it didn't bother me. But when I told someone else about the book and they asked some questions, specifically about how the police are handling the murder case.... yeaaah a lot of things don't line up/make sense. This didn't damped my excitement for the book though.

As much as I loved the ideas of identity, the mystery, and how it all fit together... the book unfortunately lost me about halfway through. Part of this was due to how the writing changes as the book progresses. The author begins to use interruptions and pushed in sentences a lot more, which added to the atmosphere and vibe, but also added an element of incoherency.
This fit the plot very well! I would even say that the atmosphere is one of the stronges points of the book.
However, it also led to me no longer being able to follow what was going on. I do believe that this was in part intentional, due to what happens to the characters, as well as how I think a lot of things are supposed to be up to the readers' interpretation.
I personally like some more clarity in my mysteries, though.

I must also admit that a lot of the talk about art went completely over my head. Same with the architecture stuff. I would be more knowledgeable in terms of AI, but there were no technical details whatsoever.

So the ending was just nothing to me. I had no idea what really happened, what it was supposed to mean, what was real and what was lies. There was also one side character who's purpose or part in the book I didn't get.

I still loved the way the book was written. I loved reading it because of the vivid pictures it painted in my mind, and the atmosphere it created and upheld all the way through.
I wish I had understood it more, but that may be because I have 0 connection to anything artistic, so maybe someone with better understanding of art or just better and interpretation will get it more.

Published by Subterranean Press on March 30, 2023

Rose/House is a science fiction horror story. Fortunately, it’s not the common version of science fiction horror that imagines alien lizard people laying eggs in humans or mad scientists releasing zombie viruses. The horror in this story is a haunted house — haunted by an Artificial Intelligence with a twisted sense of purpose.

The architect Basit Deniau is dead. His remains, compressed into the form of a diamond, are archived with all his architectural plans in Rose House, a building he designed. He also created the AI that controls and guards Rose House. The AI is inseparable from the house, a thinking, non-human creature “infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile.”

Basit has been dead for a year and the house has been sealed since his death. The only person allowed entrance is Deniau’s former student, Dr. Selene Gisel. She is allowed to visit for seven days each year, to inspect Deniau’s drawings and notes, admire his art collection, although the terms of Deniau’s Will do not allow her to remove anything or take pictures. Envious architects and groupies would love to have similar or greater access. Selene regards her special status as a curse.

The AI has a duty to report any death on the premises. It reports a death to the China Lake police but won’t open the door so they can identify the corpse. Detective Maritza Smith summons Gisil to let her into the house. It takes a bit of shallow trickery to get Maritza inside with Gisil. The house plays along with the trickery to suit its own ends, a fact that Maritza realizes too late.

Maritza’s partner, Detective Oliver Torres, doesn’t want to enter a haunted house and doesn’t try to accompany Gisel. He investigates on his own and returns when he learns that another architect has a plan to enter Rose House for a purpose that might be nefarious or benign, depending on your point of view. Torres is accompanied on his return visit by Alanna Ott, who might or might not be a journalist. While Torres is gone, Maritza has spooky adventures inside the house with Selene and the corpse, whose mouth she finds stuffed with fresh rose petals.

Rose/House tells a creative story. At least, the concept of a haunted AI house that is worshipped by architectural groupies is creative. Having established that background, Arkady Martine seemed to search for a plot that would do it justice. Martine came up with a standard story of a character who runs around in fear as the house threatens her while her partner investigates leads that add little to the plot. The explanation for the dead guy with the rose-filled mouth and the subplot involving the character who wants to break into the house is muddled. As a novella-length work, Rose/House supplies the reader with sufficient creepiness to earn a recommendation, but the story lacks the kind of characterization or meaningful threats that provide the chill a successful horror story should induce.

RECOMMENDED

Somewhere Ray Bradbury is smiling from ear to ear. This haunting beauty of a story about a dead architects greatest and most horrifying masterpiece that the people determined to steal it for themselves has all the beauty of an epic poem and all the terror of the best kind of dystopian masterpiece. If it has any faults its only that I would have liked to spend even more time in Rose Houses beautiful, beguiling rooms conversing with its delightfully mad AI. There's a touch of Shirley Jackson and just a taste of Mary Shelley to go along with this wonderful homage to Mr. Bradbury and Martine's gift for lyrical, achingly lovely prose is used to stunning effect. I finished this in one, breath catching sitting and delighted at every single word. Not to be missed.