Rose House by Arkady Martine
I would like to thank Tor for a copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Tor
Published - Out Now
Price - £16.99 hardback £8.99 ebook
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.
The haunted house is a staple of so many stories from haunted castles in Elsinore to what ever walks in Hill House alone. Homes are supposed to be our protection from the world so a home that no longer feels safe and may instead be more malevolent to you is a disconcerting idea. How would the future approach a haunted house? This is explored in Arkady Martine’s menacing science fiction horror novella Rose House where in the desert a mysterious home has reawakened and dangers await inside.
Out in the Mojave desert lies Rose House. The pinnacle of the famous architect Basit Deniau’s design not just a unique set of designed rooms, but also operated by a truly unique artificial intelligence and also contains all of Basit’s future designs. When he passed away turned into a compressed diamond the will species the house would be closed, only one person Basit’s estranged protégée Dr Selene Gisil is permitted to enter as an archivist. She hates this role as she denounced Basit’s work. She hates her last visit to the house and has stayed far far away. So a call from Detective Maritza Smith telling her that the house has reported a dead man is inside the house and only she can help then investigate is a summons she can’t ignore. Rose House awaits her one more time.
So a house haunted but perhaps not in the way we are accustomed! This is a decliously menacing novel of the uncanny that I really enjoyed. Martine here has a house dominated by its all seeing, all present AI that lives within the fabric and even the atmosphere of the house. Selene and Maritza first have to navigate just entering the door and what jumps out from the writing is Rose House is sentient and yet very much inhuman. It loves to play games, has a disturbing laugh like desert wind and seems strangely obsessed with Selene coming inside. Once over the threshold the Hpuse becomes something full of secret rooms, cold beauty and yet our invisible host reveals in the mystery of a dead body that shouldn’t be there. It knows too much and the key feeling is menace as the uncanny valley of Rose House answer questions but we sense games are being played with its reluctant guests.
Our human characters are more the flies trapped in amber. Selene clearly knows more than she lets on but at the same time is very wary that once side Rose House holds all the cards. Maritsa is an interesting character a determined detective possibly also a little too interred in the house. There is an interesting game between her and the house as she adopted the persona of her police department in order to enter. Is she trying to outwit the house, be an equal or has that been already guessed. The wider feeling is an increasingly claustrophobic novel. The occasional statement of ‘not sane’ shows Martine paying homage to Shirley Jackson’s most infamous house and there are sense of dimensions changing, the house being alive and very much its own twisted thing. The dead body is both gory and strangely decorative sensing that Rose House is fascinated by what a human body can have done to it.
There is a wider mystery and here we almost get a noir plot running alongside it. We have a locked room mystery and outside Rose House Maritza’s partner Torres finds all sorts of dangerous people ingested in this house’s secrets. While it gives the central mystery I didn’t think this quite matched the horror part of the tale. This means that while throughout expecting a big crescendo finished we usually expect in a horror story it’s feels more like everyone rather than be swallowed merely bounces off - hugely changed as we will see, scarred by the encounters but I thought we’d get something a bit more uniting it all together.
Despite that I definitely recommend this to horror lovers. Martine adopts darkly dreamlike style where beautiful design is both appealing and menacing and Rose Jouse as character we experience purely through her uncanny valley voice and intelligence is whenever she appears brimming with menace. We feel looked at. Rose House is well worth visiting just ensure you know your way out though.
