Rose/House

Overview: A thought provoking, beautiful, haunting and disturbing story from one of the most skilled writers of today.

More detailed thoughts: Arkady Martine has not published much fiction, however her debut Texicalaan Series has impressed me as possibly the highest quality, most thought provoking, moving, and beautifully written fiction of this century so far. That is very high praise, though looking at a list of awards for those books shows that I'm not alone in being impressed.

Of course I was a little nervous trying this book. It was the first non-Texicalaan book that I'd read of hers and instead of being based in a wholly imagined society, it was based in China Lake USA. I knew it would be different - but was I going to be disappointed. Were the Texicalaan books a fluke?

This story, which centres around a sealed AI managed house in the desert containing a mysterious death, is very different to the Texicalaan books. In many ways it is the opposite. The Texicalaan stories were a riot of the senses - of colours, tastes, smells, sounds and textures and there were so many different people with such varied personalities.

When I think of this book I think of the sound of wind-blown sand.

This book is quiet, it is slow, there is little action. There is a lot of reflection, questioning. The text itself is so cleverly written - both in the words themselves, but also in the use of layout and punctuation - that things do not need to be said. The story and the investigation progresses, but the questions that the reader is invited to ask of themselves and the world grows.

By the end I felt like I could scarcely breathe.

This is one of those books that is an experience. I'm not sure that a review can do it justice. It is profoundly different to the Texicalaan books, but like them you really have to read them to appreciate what make them special. It is the experience and the questions that experience raises that make these works of art.

2.5 stars.
The more I think about this book, the less enjoyable I find it.

Perhaps deliberately for a book about AI, this all feels very uncanny valley. Something is off throughout, and the whole thing feels like a classic locked room detective story filtered through the scratchy eyeballs of someone who has been awake for far too long already. It’s a very well crafted trick, and good vibe for a futuristic story that is very much in conversation with it’s predecessors (there are several direct references to The Haunting Of Hill House, for instance) but it also highlights the chief flaw of this short novel - it feels consciously worked on, something that is too openly striving for an effect. Basically the bones are too visible and there isn’t enough flesh in the story to cover them. It’s still an intriguing set up, but it’s too cerebral and designed to ever become fully engaging.