Rose/House

Rose/House

Arkady Martine

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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


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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    This 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.

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