Novella about an AI house created by a famous architect, deeded to one of his former students—who denounced him/was shaped by him in ways that are unclear from the story. The house reports a murder on its premises, but won’t let any human but the student in. I found it annoyingly elliptical, repetitive in language, and also imagining a Texas police force that apparently changed more in forty years than I would have thought plausible (for some reason they … respect the house’s wishes and don’t break in to examine the body). But if you like ghost houses, maybe? ( )

“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. ( )

A review on the back cover says that Rose/House "...evokes Shirley Jackson's Hill House if designed by Frank Gehry." I know just enough (not much) about Gehry to make some sense of that and I suspect I'd have got more out of the story if I'd ever read The Haunting of Hill House.

Instead Rose/House is an odd story about a death, probably a murder, at a building which is also an AI called Rose House as seen through the eyes of two detectives and briefly one unreliable narrator. The mystery is "solved" but with no motivation ever made clear. And I'm not sure that even Arkady Martine knows the "why", only that there must be questions about what Rose House is, what it will do, how people will perceive and interact with it, and what they will do. ( )

A waking dream, a migraine aura. The Navidson House, but with nanodrones. And desire. ( )

This is an odd book. It's a locked room mystery inside a haunted house, yes, but there is a very heavy science fiction element since the "locked room" which is also a "haunted house" is actually an AI house that thinks for itself. There's a lot of answers provided at the end of the book, even though vanishingly few of them are explicit. Most of the answers are right there for you to pick up—but you have to pick them up, they will not be handed to you.

If you like unreliable narrators, you might greatly enjoy this novella, since there is unreliable EVERYTHING in it. I liked the book, but I'm honestly still a bit bemused by it.

Early on, I wasn't sure which of the characters would end up becoming my favorite, but I certainly did not expect it to be Oliver. My opinion of him turned completely around about halfway through the book. I did enjoy the creepy AI aspect of Rose House, it's a similar feeling to me as GladOS from the Portal video games—down to hints of the same snark at times.

I have my opinions on what the resolution of the big mystery at the end is, though I'll let you try the book and see for yourself. While this is not a new favorite it is a solid story and one that will likely lurk in my memory for a long time to come. (Which, if you've read the book, is very appropriate given the ending.) ( )