Arkady Martine: Rose/House
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.
I could say that Rose/House is a locked room mystery, but that would be selling it short. Except maybe if I add that the locked room is an AI and is itself on the suspect list, that gives it more of its proper credit. The titular Rose House is an architectural marvel and quite possibly its dead (of old age) architect’s crowning achievement. For reasons we never quite learn, he stipulated in his will that at his death Rose House would be shut up with all his archives and watched over by its AI, which permeates the house. Only one person, the architect's estranged former protege, is allowed to enter the house, and only for a week per year. As we begin the story, the house makes a legally required phone call to a police precinct to report a dead body on its premises. How did someone get inside? How …
I could say that Rose/House is a locked room mystery, but that would be selling it short. Except maybe if I add that the locked room is an AI and is itself on the suspect list, that gives it more of its proper credit. The titular Rose House is an architectural marvel and quite possibly its dead (of old age) architect’s crowning achievement. For reasons we never quite learn, he stipulated in his will that at his death Rose House would be shut up with all his archives and watched over by its AI, which permeates the house. Only one person, the architect's estranged former protege, is allowed to enter the house, and only for a week per year. As we begin the story, the house makes a legally required phone call to a police precinct to report a dead body on its premises. How did someone get inside? How did they die? How can the detective get inside to retrieve the body if only the protege is allowed inside? These are the animating mysteries that drive the plot. But the plot is only half (at most) of the mystery.
Read the rest of my review, along with thoughts about science fiction murder mysteries in general on my blog: rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2023-05-12-review-moon-moth-rose-house/
