A cool think about Arkady Martine's writing is that you can always tell what she's excited about. In the Teixcalaan books, she's excited about language, which worked great for me because so am I. In Rose/House, she's excited about architecture; this was a little harder for me to connect with because I have no personal knowledge of or interest in architecture, and although the main POV character is not an academic, the academic vibe permeates the story. I don't object to this and generally enjoyed the vibe, but it sometimes made it a little detached and hard to connect with for the layperson reader (me!).

I really enjoyed Rose/House in general - it's a clever little near-future mystery with a neat setup and surreal vibe. I was very interested in everything, right up until the end. So many things get set up, and, in my opinion (and perhaps I'm missing some of the point - I wouldn't be surprised!), very few of them fully pay off. Some key questions that I have as a reader (Who is the dead man? Who actually killed him? Who is Alana Ott?) aren't answered; it's clearly deliberate, but ultimately a little unsatisfying. This novella is definitely more about the vibes than the plot, and in that aspect, it's a success, highly cerebral and atmospheric. If you like the experience of reading a story, it won't disappoint. However, if, like me, you want a little more information revealed so you can see at least the shape of the whole story by the end of it, you might leave slightly unsatisfied.

All that said, I do think Arkady Martine is an excellent writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading this novella, despite some things that kept it from being quite as good as I wanted it to be. I certainly think that every choice made was very intentional, and anything that didn't fully satisfy me is not a failing on the writer's part, just a mismatch between her style in this novella and my personal desires.

Like the architecture of Rose House itself, this novella spirals inwards, layers folding in like the petals of a rose. The structure of the story slips back and forth between past, present, and future. While I'm not usually one for overly-worked writing, Martine's elegant prose is captivating, drawing the reader in before hooking them fully with the mysterious plot. Themes of identity, autonomy, personhood, and morality permeate this novella. I'm not sure if this story would be for everyone, but it was certainly for me.

I find short stories and novellas a tease. No sooner do you get to know and care about the characters, the story is over. But, I was so impressed by Martine's Teixcalaan books that she's on my "read anything by this author" list, and this short book did not disappoint. Told primarily through the viewpoint of a likeable small town detective described by her partner as having a twisty mind, this is a murder investigation and also an encounter with a sentient house. Architecture is a prominent theme, and a big part of the story is in imagining the venue, along with the idea that a will could be enforced by a dangerous building. Highly interesting, and of course I wish it were longer.

Arkday Martine guides the haunted house story into the 21st century with the beautiful Rose/House. I see a lot of people saying they aren’t smart enough for this one and don’t worry darling, that’s a lie. Just let this book wash over you with its cool, AI-vibes. You don’t need to see into every shadowed corner to get the heart of this story—a house that isn’t right and the awful things that happen inside it. It’s scarier if you only glimpse the horrors, right? If you love Shirley Jackson, this is a story for you. If you love Borges, this is the story for you. If you loved Martine’s Teixcalaan novels, this is a story for you. A brilliant, haunted mystery/house.

Thank you Netgalley and SubPress for the early peek.

This is definitely a weird one, in mostly good ways. As others have said, this really isn't a mystery/whodunit, when it boils down to it, though a lot of the first 2/3 of the book does pretend like it's driven by that plot engine. But really, this is a fever dream about bodily autonomy, sentience, and obsession.

A brilliant and complex story about authority, personhood, integrity, and how manipulators can continue to reach beyond the grave - plus a sentient house that Doesn't Like You.

This gripping sci-fi novela centers around an AI-controlled house created by a visionary architect Basit Deniau who is now dead and has locked away all his papers and much sought-after future designs in the house’s vault. Rose House sits in the desert and has been sealed off to the world, protected by the defenses of his uber-smart, sentient AI. Only one person can gain entry for a week a year based on Basit’s will: Dr. Selene Gisil, a former Basit mentee, who had denounced both him and his work as too dark.

One night, Rose House’s AI calls into the local police station to report a dead body in the house, based on mandatory AI reporting laws. But the AI refuses to open its door to the Detective Maritza Smith who’s investigating. Smith summons Selene back from Turkey where she’s been living to help open up the Rose House and to be questioned.

Selene enters Rose House and convinces the AI to allow Smith to come along – not as a person but as representing the police precinct as a thing (as no other persons can enter). Thus unfurls the dark mysteries of the house and it’s nanobots, told within a dream-like, labyrinth narrative that has you both questioning reality and haunted about how the dead body came to be in the house.

Thanks to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

In Rose/House, Arkady Martine places her pieces on the chessboard and challenges the reader right from the start.

In this post-modern mystery we follow Maritza Smith, Oliver Torres, Selene Gisil, and of course Rose House. Rose House is an artificially intelligent...house, designed and built by the late Basit Deniau. Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is the only person permitted to come into Rose House. With the architect long dead, and the only person to be allowed to enter Rose House half way across the world, how did a murder take place inside the walls of Rose House?

In a very quick and brief review, this novella reminded me of the movie Smart House.

In a slightly more detailed review, this novella makes you think of a future that may not be far. Of AI so advances that its scary to interact with and as Detective Torres likes to say, "haunted". Rose House is a speculative story of what if AI was able to think for itself, weave in and out of the loop holes left in its code. The chess game between Detective Smith and Rose House was awesome to read. Did Rose House know all along that Maritza was not the embodiment of the China Lake Precinct and let her in just to have some entertainment? What would someone else do with the technology Deniau created? Use it for good to automate a city? Use it for power and greed? Martine allows for your imagination to be endless about aspects of the story, while at the same time giving a somewhat solid whodoneit ending.

Arkady Martine launched herself onto my auto-read list as soon as I finished her stunning debut duology. She has once again knocked it out of the park with ROSE/HOUSE, a strange and unsettling novella about AI, architecture, personhood, and hauntings (among other themes too numerous and complex to fully list in a review!)

This was an absolutely fascinating, utterly gripping book; very much one which I had a hard time putting down once I had picked it up. Martine’s writing is gorgeous here, as ever, and she does a really stellar job of deftly balancing a large number of POVs in this story, and writing an extremely well-constructed mystery. (I caught a hint in the earlier chapters of the book, and was extremely proud of myself.) The characters shine even in the short period of time we spend with them, and their different takes on the situation (as glimpses in their separate POVs) are each very compelling.

This novella packs a lot of intellectual punch in a very short space, and occasionally I felt like parts of it were going over my head — so I certainly plan on a reread, and I recommend taking your time with it (or planning similarly!).

4.5 stars, rounded up; most certainly recommended, and my enormous thanks to Subterranean Press and Netgalley for the early review copy!

Rose House is an AI built into a house that is the pinnacle of architectural design. When Basit Deniau dies he leaves only one person is allowed into Rose House for a period of one week a year. Rose House contains all his files and uncompleted design plans. Dr Selene Gisil didn’t want this honor since they had a falling out but she does go a few days every year to speak to Rose House. One night Rose House calls the police to say there is a dead body in the house that has been there for 24 hours, a call it was required by law to make but only after that time period. The police have asked Dr Gisil to come back t the house so they can find out what happened.

The way the deceased got into the house is interesting and the motivation makes sense. Rose House is an active character in the story and this has very much a haunted house feel to the story.

This murder mystery was very intriguing. Blended gothic elements with the additional twist of an AI haunted house. Rose House is bound by her programming and is acutely aware of her parameters, however after the death of her maker, no one else really does. Told in a short novella, the exploration of a murder at the home reads like a murder mystery fever dream. The ending left me wanting, and I never felt an aha moment of satisfaction to the murder mystery. In fact, by the end, it seemed deemed irrelevant to the rest of the words on the pages.

I adored Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan duology, so I was incredibly excited to get my hands on this ARC, and I was NOT disappointed. Martine 0nce again shows herself to be a master of world-building despite the constraints of this being a novella and not a sprawling space opera. I felt fully present in the world, which felt very real and plausible for a 22nd century New Mexico. And while the plot was simple enough, I was invested through the entirety.

Strongly, strongly recommend if you're looking for a very well-crafted and enveloping spec fic novella.

3.5 Rounded up. I had a hard time getting into this novella because at times the language used seems unnecessarily dense or vague, but once I did I loved the atmosphere and themes. I loved the cover and the descriptions of the house fit perfectly with the way it. is depicted. While the most basic plot is about a police officer trying to solve a potential crime after a dead body is found inside an AI run house, there is so much more to it than that. This book is more about themes I feel. It tackles architecture and art, relationships, ownership, morality, and more. This is a story that will make you think. Also, if you need your stories to be clear or end neatly I'd avoid this one.

This is a novella that makes you think. It's not a straightforward murder mystery plot.. It's using beautiful prose to make you wonder what it's like to be locked in a house that's smarter than you. I had a hard time following it, but I liked the ideas presented.

Rose/House is one of those weird trippy novellas that leave you going, I read that, but what did I read, in the best way possible. Ostensibly a murder-mystery novella, Rose/House covers. themes of identity and self in the face of seemingly-sentient AI, When a dead body is reported by the house AI of a building that allows no one, the local detectives of a backwater location find themselves in a progressively bizarre situation. This is certainly one of those books you want to go in with as little information as possible, because the confusion is part of the journey. Martine’s writing is so beautiful, dense and mazelike, with so many false clues and misdirecting details for the reader to mistakenly fixate on. The characters all have hidden secrets, little unexplainable fixations with the infamous Rose/House. I found this novella a mastery of atmosphere, fitting for a story set largely in a haunted house that stands as both graveyard and masterpiece to its late creator. Overall. I rate this novella a 4/5.

Review will go live on my blog 30 March 2023

“She was alone. Alone except for the dead, and the haunt, and whoever else was still inside the house. Which wasn’t very alone at all.”

I'm REELING. This was incredible, and such an intriguing read. I almost want to pick it right back up and read it from start to finish again just to try and re-live it.

Rose/House is set to be published on March 31, 2023. Thank you to Subterranean Press, NetGalley and the author for the digital advanced readers copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I read both of Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan novels, and thought each of the books were the best science fiction novel of their year. I was looking forward to Martine’s new novella Rose/House, and was not disappointed. In contrast to her space opera novels this book is tightly focused on the AI haunted Rose House, the last great creation of architect Basit Deniau. Everyone knows there is only one person that can enter this house, until a dead body is found, creating a science fiction locked room mystery. This is an enthralling book, written by one of the best sf writers in the field. Highly recommended.
e-ARC provided by NetGalley for review

Arkady Martine's Rose/ House takes preoccupations that readers of her novel A Memory Called Empire will be familiar with--a living place, the impression that a dead man leaves behind him, the seductions of intellectual fascination, the way an idea you love can cut you open--and refracts them through a different genre. Memory Called Empire and its sequel A Desolation Called Peace were adventure stories: there's a protagonist setting forth to learn more about the world, a beautiful woman, nobility engaged in elaborate plots, startling self-sacrifice, and a stack of similar motifs you might have met anywhere between Cherryh's Foreigner series and The Three Musketeers. Meanwhile, Rose/ House is a ghost story--a science fiction ghost story, with climate change and artificial intelligence and an architectural marvel in the Mojave desert all held up to the prism.

Rose/ House isn't coy about its genre. We're told early on that, "Yeah, Maritza grew up here, she knows like anyone else that Rose House is a haunt, and was glad when it was shut up inside with itself for good." The word "haunt" persists and multiplies, occasionally as the adjective commonly applied to houses, more often as that stark noun. But there are references to other genres too--casual references to carjackings for water rations, a detective who stubbornly investigates an inexplicable corpse--and I was inclined at first to read the book as a mystery. That's not the core. The core is the house itself: intelligent, inhuman, and beautifully, terrifyingly interested.

I love an eerie AI driven story from my formative years in science fiction reading 2001: A Space Odyssey. So when I saw Rose/House with AI forming the foundation of a haunted house story, I couldn't wait to dig in. I loved the world that was created in this novella, loved the eerie AI haunt, the mystery of a dead man found in a sealed house. There was so much that I wanted to sink my teeth into but ultimately the short format of this story didn't allow the plot to unfurl and develop as well as it could have. I just wanted more!

Thank you to Arkady Martine, Subterranean Press, and Netgalley for a free ARC (advanced reader copy) of "Rose/House" for an honest review.

I love, love, love everything that Martine has put out. I devoured her Teixcalaan Series, always hungry for more and more, riveted by the depth of her work on characters, plot, and worldbuilding, which were matched by her supreme command of the English Language (where I never felt like the content or comprehension was dumbed down for the reader).

This near-future science fiction novella was no slouch in all of those ways, too. I found this so spooky and atmospheric. There's a racing pace and tense uncertain anxiety about whether the novel will ever teeter all the way into horror, but masterfully never crests and falls into it. Readers will find themselves on the edge of their seats the whole read, both hungry for more details and in awe of their slow, sensuous reveals.