Reviews

“When the house laughed, it sounded like the ripple of a storm, the hush and shudder of leaves and sand trickling down a dune.”

Shiver. Shiver. Shiver. What a creepy locked-room murder mystery! There is a haunted house, Rose House, that is also a ghastly AI.

I liked the sci-fi world building here, it is sparse, but the reader can easily fill in the blanks and paint a bigger picture. The world has a dystopian feel, but it’s not a dystopia. It’s just a version of the future, with good things and bad all mixed together. Sci-fi stories rarely wake my sense of wonder nowadays (I have read too much sci-fi, perhaps). This one did!

There are three POV’s in 120 pages, and they were masterfully done. This is not easy to write, I am very impressed. (Oliver’s POV was a respite from all the creepiness.)

How do you explain a dead body in a house to which only one person has access after the owner’s death; and that person has an alibi? The search for answers is very dark and kept me turning the pages.

I do hope that our future AI’s are not going to be like Rose House. This is during its phone call to the police to report a dead body:

“Cause of death,” said Maritza.
“I’m a piece of architecture, Detective. How should I know how humans are like to die?”

Maybe trying to come in is a bad idea, Detective…

“What is a building without doors, Maritza?” Rose House asked her, blandly inquisitive. “Have you opinions?”
“A prison”, Maritza thought, and went back to her car.”

The story grows more and more claustrophobic, you feel like you are getting lost in Rose House and mental fog. I have mixed feelings about the ending: it was anticlimactic and not quite clear, but it did seem fitting.

thepurplebookwyrm's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Read for the 2024 Hugo Awards.

Ever wonder what a haunted house, and murder mystery story would look like in a science-fictional setting, where the ghost isn't, in fact, a ghost, but a house-wide artificial intelligence? Well, Ms Arkady's Rose/House offers an answer to that question that I, on the whole, really enjoyed.

I think the novella format was very skilfully utilised here. There was just enough world-building and 'thriller intrigue' (at times bordering on psychological horror) to keep me engaged, and the lack of broader word-building, or properly developed theming (on the nature of the self, consciousness, etc... basically the kind of stuff you'd somewhat expect from an AI-centric story), didn't feel too frustrating considering what I was actually given, in terms of entertainment and single-concept-execution, in the span of about 90 pages.

And as to Ms Arkady's prose: I found it very smooth and decently evocative overall, and certainly fit to give an appreciably immersive sketch of her near-future setting.

All in all, then, this is definitely one of the better, non-theming-rich novellas I've read so far in my life. So yay!

blacksphinx's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

"Go girl, give us nothing." It's not about any one thing enough to form a coherent thought about. It's certainly not about a plot. It waves its arms in the air a little about AI, architecture, and legacy. In the end I thought it said nothing at all.

kivt's review against another edition

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3.0

i definitely didn’t fully get it, but i didn’t like it well enough to really try

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