Aimee Gunther reviewed Rose/House by Arkady Martine
A vibe, with Arkady's knack for maneuvering #Bookstodon
4 stars
It seemingly ends abruptly, but the interpretation of the ending is left as an exercise to the reader. Great writing.
Rose/House
Arkady Martine: Rose/House
4 stars
(5 reviews)
Dee đź“– (book aspect) reviewed Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Crime fiction but also cyberpunkish but also creepy mystery
4 stars
Not a particularly long novella, but Arkady Martine pulls off jamming several genres in there. The story seems like a murder mystery at first, with the setting being a cyberpunk-esque dystopian future in a nowhere town in California desert. There are shady conspiracies. There are creepy, weird, and eccentric characters, and some of them are artificial intelligence. There is a lot of discussion of architecture. Overall, a satisfying read.
enneđź“š reviewed Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Rose/House
4 stars
On the face of it, Rose/House is a novella that looks like murder mystery: a locked house with a body inside of it. Rose House is the last architectural masterpiece of the late Basit Deniau, with an AI inside controlling/haunting it. Deniau's will stipulates that Selene Gisil is the only person allowed in, and even then she is only allowed in for seven days a year. The local police enlist her to try to get in and investigate this murder. This book dabbles in mystery noir pastiche but its heart feels more like gothic horror.
For me, the crystalizing moment for the atmosphere happened about a third of the way through, when Gisil rules lawyers Maritza into the house that only allows one "person" with a fae bargain:
“Maritza, are you a person or are you the China Lake Precinct? The distinction is significant.” [..].
“I’m the China Lake Precinct …
On the face of it, Rose/House is a novella that looks like murder mystery: a locked house with a body inside of it. Rose House is the last architectural masterpiece of the late Basit Deniau, with an AI inside controlling/haunting it. Deniau's will stipulates that Selene Gisil is the only person allowed in, and even then she is only allowed in for seven days a year. The local police enlist her to try to get in and investigate this murder. This book dabbles in mystery noir pastiche but its heart feels more like gothic horror.
For me, the crystalizing moment for the atmosphere happened about a third of the way through, when Gisil rules lawyers Maritza into the house that only allows one "person" with a fae bargain:
“Maritza, are you a person or are you the China Lake Precinct? The distinction is significant.” [..].
“I’m the China Lake Precinct Police,” said Maritza. She’d have been whatever she had to be to get to that corpse. She believed it, then, and truly. She hasn’t stopped believing it.
“So you are,” said Rose House. “There’s only one person here, and that’s Selene. Come inside, Selene.”
The door opened again. That same easy motion, almost soundless. The same hallway behind it (why had Maritza imagined it would be a different hallway?). Except this time, when she stepped forward, it didn’t close.
“I’m not going in there,” Torres said. “You realize what you just did, Maritza? That AI doesn’t think you’re human. It doesn’t have to care about you—”
In the end, the mystery is both solved and un(re)solved. There are a number of uncertain loose ends around identities and motivations, and especially around Rose House itself. (I love the recharacterization of an AI here as "haunting" the house.) A traditional mystery story would bring the puzzle pieces together into a satisfying whole, while Rose/House instead leaves the reader uneasy and unsettled.
