I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first book by Arkady Martine. I was intrigued by the premise but it was not as engaging as I had hoped it would be. For such a short book the pacing was incredibly slow. The story also did a lot of telling us that the house was creepy and "wrong" but not a lot of showing via the narrative. Overall I was just disappointed by this book.

If you love Arkady Martine’s writing as much as I do, you’re going to want to pick this up. The author of A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE and A DESOLATION CALLED PEACE is back with a haunting, gothic sci-fi novella about an AI house.

This book takes place in the remote Mojave desert - if you have ever spent time in a desert, you know what I mean when I say there is a sense of being utterly alone. Martine flawlessly recreates that feeling in her writing. 

The world Martine built is just different enough from ours to be truly unsettling. AI houses are common, but every home designed by renowned architect Basit Deniau are haunted. None, however, are as haunted as his final creation: Rose House

In a stroke of cruelty before his death, Deniau writes a will that states only Dr. Selene Gisil, his former protege, may enter the house after his death. When Rose House contacts a local detective to report the impossible - a death inside its sealed walls - both women must walk through those ominous doors and into the house that is always listening…

Thank you to Tordotcom Publishing for both the eARC and the finished copy. Opinions are my own.

I absolutely fell head over heels for Martine's first two books, so when I learned about Rose/House, even though it was only a novella, I was so excited.

This story is about an AI house that may or may not be malevolent and a murder suspect locked inside. While the tone and content of the story is very different from the other books by Martine, the authorial voice was obviously the same and I was just a captivated with the story as before.

For how short this is, this story is slow and discusses things like memory, power, technology, and obsession without giving the reader any real conclusions other than a general feeling of unease and a need to look over one's shoulder.

If you want a thoughtful murder mystery novella with a sci-fi twist, this one should definitely be one your list. I cannot wait to see what Martine comes out with next. I for one will be buying whatever it is immediately.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble reviews submitted
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**TL;DR**: I’m not smart enough for this story but I enjoyed it regardless.
**Source**: NetGalley - Thank you so much to the publisher!

**Plot**: A murder in an unbreachable house with it’s own AI personality. It’s a bit creepy and a lot weird.
**Characters**: The characters, outside the house’s own, are fairly shallow but work well in their roles. No one to connect to too intensely.
**Setting**: The inside of Rose House is bewitching and creepy, and setting it in a desert adds a whole level of uncomfortable.
**Science Fiction**: The SF elements in this were not too much a stretch which added to the creep factor here.

**Thoughts**:

Rose House is an sealed off tomb. Within it the last works of a world renown architect are hidden away, with the diamond remains of his body. His Archivist, the only person allowed into the house hates him and the house, and is no where near when the AI that runs the home calls in remains of a murdered man inside the house.

There is a lot to unpack in this story as far as possible ideas and what the author may have been exploring. It’s short and I think perhaps it doesn’t manage to convey everything it wants to. The characters are a bit flat, in fact I found myself confused on why we had certain characters doing things. Did we need the second detective? I don’t think so. The AI as a character as well felt as if it would hit us with a big moral or story or statement but it ultimately… did not.

There seemed to have been ideas of what AI would want vs what we project upon it. I also wonder about the idea of personhood in the story, and if that was a theme we were looking to explore. Overall I do think it needed more work. I loved the writing, the idea, that all was great. But the actual execution? That perhaps was lacking for me.

**3.5-stars**

Rose/House is a tense Sci-Fi Techno-Mystery by Arkady Martine. This novella was originally published in 2023, but has been recently re-released by Tor. The edition I read came in at 115-pages. With this being said, I'm not going to go into too much detail about plot.

In short, this novel features an AI house, not a house with AI capabilities, but a fully-AI house. The designer/creator/architect/inventor/owner, whatever designation you choose for him, died over a year ago. As far as anyone knows, the only other person allowed inside Rose House is the creator's former protege, Dr. Selene Gisil.

When the local policewoman, Detective Maritza Smith, gets a call from Rose House saying that there is a dead body in the house, she's shocked. The creator is gone and Dr. Gisil is overseas. Who the heck is the dead body, and how did they even get in there?

Maritza is dispatched to investigate, but if she's able to get into this fortress of a house, will she be able to get back out after? The house is being less than helpful, so that outcome is definitely unclear.

This was interesting and unlike anything I have read lately. I enjoyed the 1st-half more than the latter, but still found the concepts compelling throughout. From the moment I started learning about Rose House, I didn't want Maritza to go in. Who cares about the body? Rose House acted deceitful and it creeped me out.

To be fully transparent, anything involving AI actually creeps me out. It's like one of my biggest fears, pretty much in any iteration. I have nightmares about it.

At first, I'll admit, I was thinking the writing felt a little choppy, but the further I got in, the more it made sense for the story. The feel of it is actually a bit robotic, which makes sense considering it centers around a fully AI house. I feel like for me, the length was its biggest drawback. I wanted to know more about everything, all the concepts and all the characters. Martine gave me enough to want more, and that's a good thing, however, as far as my experience goes, I can't rate it any higher.

Nevertheless, it's good and I recommend it for any Sci-Fi fan, in particular if you enjoy stories featuring AI. Also, I did appreciate the blending of Mystery into this Techno-heavy setting. It was unsettling.

Thank you to the publisher, Tor, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I'm looking forward to picking up more from this author!

A haunting futuristic gothic "ghost" story where the ghost that haunts the house IS the house. The house has been designed to be impenetrable to all except the former protege of the architect. When the AI calls the local police to report a dead body the mystery is not only who killed him, but how did he get in? And why? The houses motivations and actions are opaque. The detective may be able to get in, but will she be able to get out? This novella was creepy and suspenseful. If you have not read anything by Arkady Martine before, this is a good introduction.

The nitty-gritty: A surreal, locked room murder mystery set in an impossible house, Rose/House is a beautifully written puzzle of a story.

I’m so glad Tordotcom decided to rerelease Rose/House, which I may not have read otherwise. Rose/House is weird in the best possible way, and I really enjoyed it. It’s also my first time reading Arkady Martine’s work, and it won’t be my last.

The story takes place a hundred years or so in the future in the small California desert town of China Lake (more on that later). Basit Deniau was a famous and innovative architect whose greatest creation was Rose House, a living house that is an AI intelligence (as opposed to a house with AI). In his will, Basit left Rose House to a former student of his, Selene Gisil, who is the only person Rose House will allow inside. Selene is granted access only once a year for a week, and during that time she’s allowed to go through Basit’s archival drawings and journals. No one has been able to recreate Basit’s unique AI technology, and after his death architects and journalists clamor for any scraps of information they can get on the reclusive genius. 

One day Detective Maritza Smith gets a call from Rose House informing her that someone has been murdered inside the house. This is a mystery because the house should be empty. The only logical suspect is Selene Gisil, but she has a solid alibi. Maritza knows she has to get inside the house to investigate the murder, and Selene is the only one who can help. 

But once inside, things only get weirder. Can Maritza solve the murder? Or will Rose House refuse to give up its secrets?

Rose/House is short and the cast of characters is fairly small, but it’s just the right amount for the length of the story, in my opinion. In addition to Rose House (who is definitely a character in the story), Selene and Maritza, we also meet another detective named Oliver Torres and a journalist named Alanna Ott, who have their own side story that ties into the murder investigation. And I can’t forget Basit Deniau himself, whose body is still in the house, although Rose House has turned his remains into a fist-sized diamond. I loved Maritza’s story the most, since she’s determined to break through Rose House’s defenses and figure out the murder.

The author calls Basit’s AI structures “haunts,” as if the buildings themselves are haunted by AI. It was such a weird concept but it somehow made sense, especially once we go inside the house and experience the odd interior. I’ve always loved stories that play with architecture and the idea that a house might be completely different on the inside, and Martine's descriptions are surreal and dreamlike. Even Maritza has the sense that once inside, she may never escape Rose House—after all, the last intruder died there—so the reader has yet another mystery to ponder.

It’s the setting, though, that captured my attention from the very first page. China Lake is a real place, and it just happens to be where I was born and raised (technically, China Lake is part of a restricted naval base with a civilian town attached). Why Arkady Martine chose this location for her story I have no idea (although I’m tempted to write and ask her!). At first I brushed it off as coincidence, but she includes several real life details (like nearby highway 395, its proximity to Los Angeles, and the “old naval base,” not to mention the secluded desert setting) that can’t be anything but the China Lake I remember. California readers may recognize the setting, but I doubt many others will, which makes this a very cool and personal detail for me.

The story becomes more bizarre and metaphysical the longer Maritza spends in the house, and things get a little confusing at this point. But Rose House is such a strange entity anyway, it sort of makes sense. Readers who appreciate stellar writing and weird mysteries that may or may not be completely solved at the end will not want to miss this.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

The writing is so similar to A Memory Called Empire, but this has more of a horror adjacent vibe, which I loved. We follow the only person who can solve the murder of a body found in an AI house that's supposed to be empty. The AI is especially creepy because it can LIE and is also vaguely and not so vaguely threatening.

I definitely prefer a longer book by Arkady Martine, however, because I feel that they excel when they can take their time to establish the complex worlds they create.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Having loved Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan duology, I was so excited for a new book from her. However, this novella left me wanting. It wasn't bad at all, it just felt like it was missing something. I just didn't really get it. I didn't feel connected to any of the characters and found myself a bit bored, sadly. The writing was beautiful, as Martine's always is.

Set in the distant future, we have a house built by a famous architect. The architect is dead, the house is guarded by an AI, and only one person is allowed in. For exactly one week per year, Selene is allowed into Rose house to explore to her heart's content.. Except she doesn't want to. Now she has to go back when a body is found inside Rose House.. How did this person even get in? How did they die? This is the job of Detective Maritza Smith to figure out, and she needs Selenes help to get answers..

The house is my favorite part of this story. Rose House- I love how sinister it comes across while preserving what it's been programmed to do. I would read an entire novel following Rose House..
Selene and Maritza were interesting characters. I just felt like I didn't get to really dive into who they were, and I was left confused at certain plot points. Overall, this is a short but entertaining book, and I had a good time reading it. I would check out this author's other works.

I'm like morbidly fascinated by AI houses, mostly because of the hell we live in currently. So, I was really intrigued bt the premise of this. I thought that a sci-fi/AI/thriller set in a future Cali would be compelling and I was right. This was a really novel take on a murder mystery thriller, and I flew through it! I would have loved a little more time in the story to really sink my teeth into it but I still loved this regardless. I would have read a full-length novel about this, but Martine really worked the novella format/length to suit their story well, so it was still awesome. I am fighting for physical copies of this for our branch, so fingers crossed, but either way I think this is going to be a novella that makes a splash (this year especially).

It should be well known at this point that I love haunted house stories. Arkady Martine’s new novella, Rose/House is no exception to this.

In China Lake, California, legendary architect Basit Desiau built his masterpiece. Rose House is an advanced artificial intelligence that is fully integrated into the entire structure of a solitary house built out in the desert, some distance from the town proper. The locals refer to it as a haunt, as the AI within Rose House permeates through the whole building.

There is a dead man inside Rose House. That has been true for a year. Desiau arranged for the house to take the carbon that remained in his body after his death and compress it into a diamond, which the house then put on a plinth for display. In that respect as well, Rose House has always been haunted.

Now, though, there is another dead man inside Rose House. That shouldn’t be possible, as the only person in the world who was supposed to be able to access the labyrinthine house and its collection of Desiau’s archived work was on the other side of the world when he died. Dr. Selene Gisil, a former student of Desiau’s, is the only living person allowed inside Rose House. Her permissions, set by Desiau before his death, are to ensure that she remains the sole human caretaker of his notes and unpublished works. Despite having publicly distanced herself from Desiau before his death (and diamond-ification), Gisil is still the person he wanted to serve as seneschal.

Twenty-four hours have passed since this mysterious man died, and so Rose House has fulfilled its obligation by notifying the China Lake police precinct, in accordance with its programming guidelines. In order to get inside to examine the decedent, Detective Maritza Smith must track down Gisil and convince her to come back to the United States. There’s no one else that Rose House will allow inside, dead body or no. But who is the victim? How did he get inside Rose House to begin with? What is really happening out in the middle of the Mojave?

This is the first of Arkady Martine’s works that I’ve read, and I was very impressed with my first foray into her writing. Rose/House is a tight, tense narrative with little room for embellishment that you typically encounter in similar, albeit longer, works. All of our narrators get a little time to shine, and will leave you questioning what any of them really saw or did. I’ll definitely be looking into A Memory Called Empire in the near future if this book is at all indicative of Martine’s writing. My utmost thanks to Tor and to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Rose/House is out in the world in hardcover tomorrow, 3/11/25. Go grab a copy, and let it grab you.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2025/03/10/rose-house-a-review/

A sci-fi mystery set in future California. Extremely well paced thriller that centers around an AI house. When a body is reported in an AI mansion, how do you gain access to the crime scene? A fresh take on the haunted hous murder thriller.

This was a masterpiece of a sci-fi mystery that packed a punch of a story into just a short 128 pages. I am impressed with how Martine was able to fill this story full of intrigue and an AI that was a lot more than it seems. This is how to perfectly write a novella without making the story feel rushed. I already feel the need to reread this.

TorDotCom novellas just never miss.

I'd say this was way more sci-fi than horror. I like AI as horror but this just felt very convoluted and confusing. I get that the house is a haunt but quite a few things made no sense. Maybe this was Rose House showing the detective what it wanted her to see?
Anyway, Detective Smith gets a call from Rose House itself to report a dead person within its confines. But how did he get in and who killed him? The house will only admit Dr. Selene Gisil, its archivist, as its designer is already dead and buried within the house.
So yeah, this was strange and confusing but more speculative sci-fi than horror.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and tordotcom for this digital e-arc.*

This book is for all the millennials who wanted the Smart House movie to be horror. This took artificial intelligence to a whole new terrifying level. Someone dies inside a haunt house (who is incredibly creepily intelligent) and only two people are allowed inside to investigate. It starts creepy and the horrors just keep coming. If you are a fan of scary AI and/or haunted house stories don't miss this book!

I've been seeing Arkady Martine's name on lists for years but was intimidated by the heft of the Teixcalaan series, so I was excited to stumble upon this novella as an entry point. After reading Rose/House, I immediately put A Memory Called Empire on hold at the library and am actually looking forward to its length, partially because Martine's writing is so eerie and beautiful, but also because her weird world-building could use more room to breathe. I am a sucker for spooky architecture and the sci-fi/tech angle rather than a supernatural one was refreshing, but I could have easily lived in this world with these characters for a couple hundred more pages. The ending was a letdown but the 95% leading up to it made up for the disappointment.

I’ve been curious about Arkady Martine’s Rose/House for a while, but it wasn’t available as an ebook in the UK, so I set it aside for the future. When I spotted it for request on Netgalley, I admit I rather swooped on it! I think the description tends to suggest it’s a science fiction mystery, but I’d argue it comes out closer to horror than to mystery in many ways, playing with themes and scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror novel.

All in all, it might be best not to cling too tightly to labels and let the story speak for itself, though. Certainly the AI at the centre of the story, Rose House, seems to be playing around: it allows Detective Maritza Smith into the house, under the conceit that she is not a person but “the precinct” — and Maritza plays along.

It’s all as unsettling as Rose House itself is described to be, with bizarre scenes like a dead body stuffed with rose petals, the descriptions of weird architecture, and the obvious hold that Basit Deniau has over Selene Gisil, despite his death. The setup does sound like it’s meant to be an “impossible crime”/locked room type mystery — but I think we’re given something else that plays with that concept. (Though I think there are elements of “fair play” mystery here; we’re told something important that we may not notice is important, but we have the clue.)

I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m glad I got to read it.

I loved the setting and set-up: a locked-room mystery controlled by a rogue AI. The vibe and writing created an ominous tone, but I wish it had culminated in something a little bit more.

I’ve been wanting to read Rose/House ever since it was released as a special edition a year or two back. It has a great concept, but honestly I just could not bring myself to care about the story or most of the characters. There’s a distance between the characters and the readers, and the plot was not as compelling as I had hoped it would be.