Rose/House
Ratings24
Average rating3.4
Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire, is back on the 2024 Hugo nominations list with her sci-fi gothic thriller Rose/House. 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. Dr. Selene Gisil, a former protégé, is the sole person permitted to come into Rose House once a year. Now, there is a dead person in Rose House. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. But Rose House won't communicate any further. No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called in the death. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still. Also by Arkady Martine: A Memory Called Empire A Desolation Called Peace
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Overview: A thought provoking, beautiful, haunting and disturbing story from one of the most skilled writers of today.
More detailed thoughts: Arkady Martine has not published much fiction, however her debut Texicalaan Series has impressed me as possibly the highest quality, most thought provoking, moving, and beautifully written fiction of this century so far. That is very high praise, though looking at a list of awards for those books shows that I'm not alone in being impressed.
Of course I was a little nervous trying this book. It was the first non-Texicalaan book that I'd read of hers and instead of being based in a wholly imagined society, it was based in China Lake USA. I knew it would be different - but was I going to be disappointed. Were the Texicalaan books a fluke?
This story, which centres around a sealed AI managed house in the desert containing a mysterious death, is very different to the Texicalaan books. In many ways it is the opposite. The Texicalaan stories were a riot of the senses - of colours, tastes, smells, sounds and textures and there were so many different people with such varied personalities.
When I think of this book I think of the sound of wind-blown sand.
This book is quiet, it is slow, there is little action. There is a lot of reflection, questioning. The text itself is so cleverly written - both in the words themselves, but also in the use of layout and punctuation - that things do not need to be said. The story and the investigation progresses, but the questions that the reader is invited to ask of themselves and the world grows.
By the end I felt like I could scarcely breathe.
This is one of those books that is an experience. I'm not sure that a review can do it justice. It is profoundly different to the Texicalaan books, but like them you really have to read them to appreciate what make them special. It is the experience and the questions that experience raises that make these works of art.
