Rose/House
Genres: Mystery,
Science Fiction Pages: 128
Rating: 
Synopsis: Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: 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? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.
Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.
But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.
There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.
No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.
I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I’ve been curious about Arkady Martine’s Rose/House for a while, but it wasn’t available as an ebook in the UK, so I set it aside for the future. When I spotted it for request on Netgalley, I admit I rather swooped on it! I think the description tends to suggest it’s a science fiction mystery, but I’d argue it comes out closer to horror than to mystery in many ways, playing with themes and scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror novel.
All in all, it might be best not to cling too tightly to labels and let the story speak for itself, though. Certainly the AI at the centre of the story, Rose House, seems to be playing around: it allows Detective Maritza Smith into the house, under the conceit that she is not a person but “the precinct” — and Maritza plays along.
It’s all as unsettling as Rose House itself is described to be, with bizarre scenes like a dead body stuffed with rose petals, the descriptions of weird architecture, and the obvious hold that Basit Deniau has over Selene Gisil, despite his death. The setup does sound like it’s meant to be an “impossible crime”/locked room type mystery — but I think we’re given something else that plays with that concept. (Though I think there are elements of “fair play” mystery here; we’re told something important that we may not notice is important, but we have the clue.)
I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m glad I got to read it.
Rating: 4/5
