Rose/House

Det. Maritza Smith needs to solve the mystery inside Rose House, but the only way she can get in is if Dr. Selene Gisil allows it.

While I very much enjoyed Martine’s Teixcalaan Series, and I found the idea behind Rose/House extremely appealing, I didn’t care for this at all. I found the characters bland, the prose slippery and overly descriptive, and the denouement ultimately unsatisfying. I’d much rather read another Teixcalaan novel.

Of a spooky Ai haunted house. But somehow it didn't work so well for me. Maybe too many film Noir references made the atmosphere feel a little forced. Also the police was really not taking heir job seriously. No protocols observed ever, and some dumb mistakes were made. I still enjoyed it though.

Cyberpunk in its way, this is a genre-resisting noir (the detectives are police, not private, the clients don't want to be clients).

It has Martine's characteristic poetic prose, and themes of people, places, and the messy complexity of their relationships. Enjoyed it, despite it being a little disorientingly inhuman at times.

Each element is pristine and sun-baked here, like the setting: reluctant detective on the murder case, wealthy aesthetic recluse, mundanely dystopian AI. And as spare translucent noir, I enjoyed it.

It seemingly ends abruptly, but the interpretation of the ending is left as an exercise to the reader. Great writing.

It starts like a whodunnit and wanders off to (almost) horror, revisiting the genre of the haunted place. An entertaining read.

Not a particularly long novella, but Arkady Martine pulls off jamming several genres in there. The story seems like a murder mystery at first, with the setting being a cyberpunk-esque dystopian future in a nowhere town in California desert. There are shady conspiracies. There are creepy, weird, and eccentric characters, and some of them are artificial intelligence. There is a lot of discussion of architecture. Overall, a satisfying read.