Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Published by Subterranean Press on March 30, 2023
Rose/House is a science fiction horror story. Fortunately, it’s not the common version of science fiction horror that imagines alien lizard people laying eggs in humans or mad scientists releasing zombie viruses. The horror in this story is a haunted house — haunted by an Artificial Intelligence with a twisted sense of purpose.
The architect Basit Deniau is dead. His remains, compressed into the form of a diamond, are archived with all his architectural plans in Rose House, a building he designed. He also created the AI that controls and guards Rose House. The AI is inseparable from the house, a thinking, non-human creature “infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile.”
Basit has been dead for a year and the house has been sealed since his death. The only person allowed entrance is Deniau’s former student, Dr. Selene Gisel. She is allowed to visit for seven days each year, to inspect Deniau’s drawings and notes, admire his art collection, although the terms of Deniau’s Will do not allow her to remove anything or take pictures. Envious architects and groupies would love to have similar or greater access. Selene regards her special status as a curse.
The AI has a duty to report any death on the premises. It reports a death to the China Lake police but won’t open the door so they can identify the corpse. Detective Maritza Smith summons Gisil to let her into the house. It takes a bit of shallow trickery to get Maritza inside with Gisil. The house plays along with the trickery to suit its own ends, a fact that Maritza realizes too late.
Maritza’s partner, Detective Oliver Torres, doesn’t want to enter a haunted house and doesn’t try to accompany Gisel. He investigates on his own and returns when he learns that another architect has a plan to enter Rose House for a purpose that might be nefarious or benign, depending on your point of view. Torres is accompanied on his return visit by Alanna Ott, who might or might not be a journalist. While Torres is gone, Maritza has spooky adventures inside the house with Selene and the corpse, whose mouth she finds stuffed with fresh rose petals.
Rose/House tells a creative story. At least, the concept of a haunted AI house that is worshipped by architectural groupies is creative. Having established that background, Arkady Martine seemed to search for a plot that would do it justice. Martine came up with a standard story of a character who runs around in fear as the house threatens her while her partner investigates leads that add little to the plot. The explanation for the dead guy with the rose-filled mouth and the subplot involving the character who wants to break into the house is muddled. As a novella-length work, Rose/House supplies the reader with sufficient creepiness to earn a recommendation, but the story lacks the kind of characterization or meaningful threats that provide the chill a successful horror story should induce.
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