Dust jacket illustration by David Curtis. Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella. 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. Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
DNF at around 50%
I really wanted to love this, I bought it partly because I adore Martine's Teixcalaan duology and partly because I'm pretty much always interested in stories that play with concepts around the division between humans and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, I'll be unhauling it and passing it along to someone who enjoys post-modern, distanced writing styles more than I do.
I'm a very character-driven reader and this story is so clearly a thematic exploration. I just never really cared about anything that was happening, in large part because I never felt in any way connected to any of the characters. It would have had zero impact on me if any of them had just dropped dead at any point in the 50-ish pages that I read.
And on a writing style level, I just could not. I know there have been some complaints about Teixcalaan feeling pretentious but oof, this one was so much worse for me. I loved the way that Martine wrote Teixcalaan and the language and the history and the detail but there was nothing I liked about the style of Rose/House. It just felt so post-modern and affected in a way that actively turned me off.
If you like thematic explorations on AI, creepy houses and an almost gothic atmosphere, you might enjoy this. I do think you'll either love or hate the style of it and at least it's short so you'll know pretty quickly one way or the other. I'll still pick up anything Martine writes but this one just wasn't for me.
0This was so weird. There was a plot but it was totally not about that, it was about the vibes. At the end it really did feel like a migraine aura, where your brain is utterly perplexed at why you can’t see right and then everything starts to take on a tinge of un-reality. And if you perhaps could look a bit better, everything would go back to something you could understand. But that’s not how it works and instead you’re left not knowing how to fix this state you’ve found yourself in except sleep.
0 0
© 2024 Pagebound