#netgalley

Firstly, thank you to the publisher for including me on the Rose/House blog tour, and apologies for my terrible lateness with my review.

Ah, Rose/House, what a strange little puzzle of a book. At its core, it’s a locked-room murder mystery - but with a twist. The ‘room’ in question is a seemingly sentient AI-controlled house in the Mojave Desert, the setting a nearish-future dystopia, and the whole thing is cloaked in a film noir vibe.

Rose House, an infamous local ‘haunt’, was the work of a brilliant architect, Basit Deniau, and holds its secrets close. It permits entry to precisely one person: his former protégé, Dr. Selene Gisil. So when the house suddenly reports a dead body inside, the local police are left floundering. With doors that resist their entry and an uncooperative AI, their only hope is to enlist Selene for an investigation.

But here’s the thing: the murder itself isn’t really the point. The real intrigue lies in the house itself—its eerie autonomy, its strangely emotional responses, and the way the crime disturbs it. The book plays with ideas of AI development, obsession, unhealthy mentor-student relationships, climate change and self-deception but never entirely weaves them into something fully satisfying.

Rose/House had the potential to be deeply fever dream weird in the best way, but for me, it didn’t push far enough. Creepy, yes, but ultimately a bit forgettable.

Rose/House is a sci-fi thriller mystery which keeps the reader engaged until the very end even if you leave the book feeling a bit bewildered.

The concept was executed very well and Arkady Martine did an excellent job of building a world and concept of the house that is AI itself all while feeling easily ingestible in a short format.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Pan Macmillan/Tor for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Rose/House is a sci-fi (or better, speculative) novella that almost reads like a supernatural one - which makes sense, since the titular AI is often described as a "haunt". Set about a century from now, in a California plagued by droughts that are only implied by the mention of water thefts, the story is as creepy, intriguing and eerily removed from the outside world as the compressed diamond that once was the body of Rose House's creator (now resting on a plinth within its walls) is in relation to the house itself. Mind you: this is a thriller, and a character study (if mainly of the non-human character), and an homage to/a satire of high-brow art and the architectural field (but obliquely, of most human obsessions), and a look at a toxic mentor/protégé relationship, and a few other things, yet its focus isn't on any of them. The dreamlike, yet unsettling atmosphere takes center stage, and in the end, you won't exactly have answers, but you'll have probably forgotten the questions as well (or at least dismissed them as inconsequential). I'm in two minds about the writing - quite lovely and evocative, yet at times hard to make head or tail of, or strangely bent ("Improbability itches, a flutter in the numbers like gossamer foam"; "Tired lensing into pissed off"). But I did enjoy this one-of-a-kind take on AI and haunted/haunting places, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an almost impalpable, atmosphere-driven story.

The concept of this novella is fascinating - an (artificial) intelligent house that is not just embedded with AI but is AI fully itself with its architect dead inside it and only one other person has access to it for 7 days a year, so what happens when a murder was reported inside it?

Atmospheric, chilling, and haunting would be the adjectives I would use to describe the writing in Rose/House. There's this element of a suffocating silence that is foreboding and ominous that accompany you the whole time you're reading the book. I felt like I was there inside the house with Selene and Maritza, holding my breath everytime Rose House talked. However, as haunting as this book was, I couldn't take my eyes off the pages.

Thank you so much to Tor and Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

3.5 stars

I loved A Memory Called Empire so I was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, I was a little let down.

The prose is flawless as expected; I love the author's lyrical writing style. The setting of Rose House was also really cool, the atmosphere and mystery was chilling.

The story was... it was fine. The premise sounded really interesting to me, but the story didn't really go anywhere with it. I'm not sure what I had expected, but I definitely expected more.

This was a bit of a let down for me. I thought the atmosphere was well done and I liked the general concept, but I found the narrative a bit meandering and the ending was pretty lackluster. Overall, it was an interesting but ultimately pretty forgettable read.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Rose House was perhaps the greatest creation of an Andorran architect who built bizarre and beautiful houses around the world. Isolated far out in the Mojave desert and inhabited by an AI, it's admired in the architecture community but known by locals simply as a 'haunt'. When Rose House reports a dead body within its walls, detective Maritza Smith sets out to investigate, but things are strange from the start; only one person, Selene, the architect's protégé, is permitted inside the house, and she was out of the country when the death occurred. Rose/House is an intense and eerie novella that is most obviously inspired by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House ('[a] possessing poison intelligence, that... kept itself whole - if not quite sane') but also reminded me of other terrifying chunks of interior space. I'm thinking The House of the Undying in George R.R. Martin's A Clash of Kings, Slade House in David Mitchell's Slade House or Adela's house in Mariana Enríquez's Our Share of Night. Portraying a construction haunted by technology is not a new idea, but Arkady Martine pulls it off so well; I especially loved her skewed use of academic theories about how buildings shape people's behaviour. Rose House's voice is so chilling, uncanny in the best kind of way; I think the only other writer I've read who's captured the potential otherness of AI so well is Ann Leckie. A completely different kind of book from Martine's A Memory Called Empire, and for my money, much the better for it. 4.5 stars.

The Artificially Intelligent House has a surprisingly long history, in movies you can go back as Demon Seed to find a house with intelligence that - er - wants to impregnate Julie Christie. Martine's AI haunted house novella is somewhat stuck with the model of the deadly house, here designed by a cutting-edge architect who has willed the house to one of his old, most argumentative students. Rose House, as it is called, is out in the desert and is so advanced that it has almost complete control over its own architecture - it doesn't have conventional doors and will only let you in if it wants to. The new owner finds it creepy and only visits to continue archiving her old mentor's papers, Rose House only lets her in for one week per year, and this year she only did a few days. Which is handy when she is called back because Rose House has contacted the local police to inform them that there has been a murder on the premises.

Rose House hits the problem pretty early on that if there is a murder in an AI house, which is all seeing and super smart, well that murder was probably done by the house. Or if it wasn't done by the house, it should certainly know who did it, considering it monitors every facet of its existence. Martine is trying to write a techno haunted house thriller, but his ghost is the machine, and has to follow certain rules (not quite the rules of robotics but not far off). So there is a rules lawyering AI, a cop (who under the circumstances is pretending to be an entity which is her police department). It didn't really work all that well for me, it didn't particularly distinguish itself from other smarmily smart AI houses, and the method of the murder was pretty much suggested by the nature of the story. It reads well, and quickly, Martine writes very well after all, but it was too short to flesh out its characters, and the mystery, and attempt at a techno ghost felt flat.

The haunted house is a staple of so many stories from haunted castles in Elsinore to what ever walks in Hill House alone. Homes are supposed to be our protection from the world so a home that no longer feels safe and may instead be more malevolent to you is a disconcerting idea. How would the future approach a haunted house? This is explored in Arkady Martine’s menacing science fiction horror novella Rose House where in the desert a mysterious home has reawakened and dangers await inside.

Out in the Mojave desert lies Rose House. The pinnacle of the famous architect Basit Deniau’s design not just a unique set of designed rooms, but also operated by a truly unique artificial intelligence and also contains all of Basit’s future designs. When he passed away turned into a compressed diamond the will species the house would be closed, only one person Basit’s estranged protégée Dr Selene Gisil is permitted to enter as an archivist. She hates this role as she denounced Basit’s work. She hates her last visit to the house and has stayed far far away. So a call from Detective Maritza Smith telling her that the house has reported a dead man is inside the house and only she can help then investigate is a summons she can’t ignore. Rose House awaits her one more time.

So a house haunted but perhaps not in the way we are accustomed! This is a decliously menacing novel of the uncanny that I really enjoyed. Martine here has a house dominated by its all seeing, all present AI that lives within the fabric and even the atmosphere of the house. Selene and Maritza first have to navigate just entering the door and what jumps out from the writing is Rose House is sentient and yet very much inhuman. It loves to play games, has a disturbing laugh like desert wind and seems strangely obsessed with Selene coming inside. Once over the threshold the Hpuse becomes something full of secret rooms, cold beauty and yet our invisible host reveals in the mystery of a dead body that shouldn’t be there. It knows too much and the key feeling is menace as the uncanny valley of Rose House answer questions but we sense games are being played with its reluctant guests.

Our human characters are more the flies trapped in amber. Selene clearly knows more than she lets on but at the same time is very wary that once side Rose House holds all the cards. Maritsa is an interesting character a determined detective possibly also a little too interred in the house. There is an interesting game between her and the house as she adopted the persona of her police department in order to enter. Is she trying to outwit the house, be an equal or has that been already guessed. The wider feeling is an increasingly claustrophobic novel. The occasional statement of ‘not sane’ shows Martine paying homage to Shirley Jackson’s most infamous house and there are sense of dimensions changing, the house being alive and very much its own twisted thing. The dead body is both gory and strangely decorative sensing that Rose House is fascinated by what a human body can have done to it.

There is a wider mystery and here we almost get a noir plot running alongside it. We have a locked room mystery and outside Rose House Maritza’s partner Torres finds all sorts of dangerous people ingested in this house’s secrets. While it gives the central mystery I didn’t think this quite matched the horror part of the tale. This means that while throughout expecting a big crescendo finished we usually expect in a horror story it’s feels more like everyone rather than be swallowed merely bounces off - hugely changed as we will see, scarred by the encounters but I thought we’d get something a bit more uniting it all together.

Despite that I definitely recommend this to horror lovers. Martine adopts darkly dreamlike style where beautiful design is both appealing and menacing and Rose Jouse as character we experience purely through her uncanny valley voice and intelligence is whenever she appears brimming with menace. We feel looked at. Rose House is well worth visiting just ensure you know your way out though.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.

I loved the concepts of this novella - the haunted AI house, the desert, the near-future world, the descriptions of the house and architecture. The AI's voice was creepy in a great way. But the plot and the resolution didn't quite seem satisfactory. It petered out.

Worth a read for the mood and vibes but not if one wants a clever mystery-thriller.

Rose/House is an eerie, atmospheric sci-fi mystery that blurs the line between sentience and control. With a locked-room murder, a sentient AI house, and a deep sense of unease lingering on every page, Arkady Martine delivers a speculative thriller that is equal parts chilling and compelling.

At its heart, this novella explores power—who holds it, who is trapped by it, and what happens when it takes on a life of its own. The house is more than just a setting; it is a presence, watching and manipulating, its intelligence as unnerving as it is fascinating. Selene Gisil, the reluctant archivist, and Detective Maritza Smith navigate a web of history, resentment, and secrets, all while the house itself dictates the rules of the game.

Martine’s writing is exquisite, layering unease and claustrophobia into every interaction. There’s a creeping sense of wrongness, an uncanny stillness, and a lingering question—how much control do we ever really have? Rose House feels almost alive, its sentience unsettlingly plausible, making the book feel more like a psychological haunting than a traditional sci-fi mystery. Much like The Haunting of Hill House, the house itself is an oppressive force—watching, waiting, and warping the story around its presence.

I was completely drawn into this strange, cerebral mystery. Though the novella’s short length left me craving just a little more depth in places, the fever-dream quality and eerie, speculative atmosphere more than made up for it. This isn’t a neatly wrapped mystery—Martine leans into ambiguity, leaving lingering questions rather than definitive answers. If you love books that feel like fever dreams, AI sentience, and gothic unease wrapped in a sci-fi setting, Rose/House is worth a pick-up.

Huge thanks to Pan Macmillan (and NetGalley) for the ARC and for including me in the blog tour for this haunting read!

I never quite "got" this novella, but I think it was aiming for this. A subtle creeping wrongness combined with a murder kept me on the edge of my reading seat and never quite knowing what direction the book was going to take. AI combined with architecture is something that isn't that far off, or at least doesn't feel like it, despite humanity knowing these risks. This book plays with those fears, in a very realistic way. Nothing too dramatic. Nothing unbelievable. Just enough that I feel *even more* uncomfortable about the idea of fully sentient AI running my household than I did before!

This novella does not wrap up nicely, if you need that this isn't the book for you. There are loose ends, places where logic does not go, and characters that feel like they don't really need to be there, and yet it all comes together to create this perfectly creepy atmosphere. The writing is intended to disorient you and leave you with more questions than answers by the end of your reading experience.

This is one I think I need to reread to truly grasp, and despite knowing what will happen the second time around I think I'll get just as much enjoyment out of it again.

Basit Deniau was an architect who designed & built 'Rose House', a house embedded with AI. Since his death, Rose House has been sealed with no-one allowed in apart from Dr Selene Gisil, who is allowed to visit for 1 week per year as per the terms of Basit's will. So it is a surprise when the local police department receive a call from Rose House reporting the presence of a dead body inside the premises. A police officer visits the house but is not allowed in by the AI, so Dr Gisil returns to the house to gain entry for the investigation.

This novella is a distinctly odd read & I mean that in a positive way. It's an intriguing premise: an abandoned house run by an AI who controls exit & entry of the one person allowed in there. So how did the dead body end up there? Once Dr Gisil & the police officer are inside the house, the AI acts almost sentient as it displays enjoyment of subterfuge, word play, & double meanings. It must have seen what happened but is strangely reluctant to divulge that information. It's a fairly short read & the ending doesn't tie up all the loose ends, rather it leaves the reader with a sense of disquiet or unease. I thought it was an interesting read. 3.75 stars (rounded up).

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Pan Macmillan/Tor, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Arkady Martine is the author of the Sci Fi duology A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, and simply for that reason I absolutely had to be part of the blog tour for Rose/House, and I have zero regrets!

Amidst the Mohave Desert sits Rose House, the pinnacle of the work of now deceased architect Basit Deniau whose departed remains are held within. At its heart, Rose House could be considered sentient, its beating heart AI that controls, drives and manages everything about this edifice and amidst a world obsessed with and desperate to gain access to the legacy of Basit Deniau, limits access to just one person – Selene Gisil, former student and acolyte, now bitter ‘archivist’ unable to escape her former teacher’s control.

If you have read and loved Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, then you will most definitely recognise and respond to this homage, as well as other references to notable Sci Fi authors including William Gibson – Easter Eggs! The House is the protagonist and supported by the reluctant archivist and local police - Detective Maritza Smith, this novella unfolds a locked room mystery that fills you with an unerring sense of unease, creepiness and strangeness.

It’s impressive how in such a short novella Arkady conjures such a sense of unease, dread and anxiety, that leaves you thinking about this book long after you’ve read it. The trope of an AI building is managed and delivered beautifully, bringing a true sense of the inhumanity ‘otherness’ of Rose House and how impactful that is on the characters within the story and Rose House. Arkady weaves snippets and a sense of the history, resentment, rumours and past events into the story, creating a standalone mystery that leaves you gasping at it draws to such a speculative conclusion.

Huge thanks to Pan MacMillan, Tor and NetGalley for the arc of Rose/House in exchange for my honest review and please do take a look at my Blog Tour Day coming up soon!

Rose/House es una novela corta de Arkady Martine inspirada por los misterios de habitación cerrada del más puro estilo detectivesco del siglo pasado, pero con un toque de futuro cercano gracias a la presencia de la inteligencia artificial y a unos velados comentarios distópicos.


La novela es tan corta como para resultar en ocasiones frustrante por la falta de detalles, es parca en personajes pero consigue crear una tensión y una inquietante sensación de inseguridad alrededor de ellos e incluso se permite el lujo de hablar sobre el maltrato psicológico de las figuras de poder. Lo que ha conseguido Martine con Rose/House es loable, pero creo que no está destinado a todos los públicos.

Rose House es el mausoleo de Basit Deniau, un arquitecto genial del que se dice que todas sus casas estaban malditas, así que es de suponer que su obra cumbre, donde pasará el resto de la eternidad convertido en una estatua de diamante, también lo estará. Controlada por una inteligencia artificial que es la propia casa, es objeto de codicia de todos los grandes estudios de arquitectura del mundo, ya que en su interior está el legado de Deniau, todos sus planos, sus controvertidas ideas y sus planes de futuro. Pero solo tiene acceso a ella y solo por una semana al año la doctora Selene Gisil, la “protegida” del celebérrimo arquitecto. A pesar de las posibilidades, Selene no es capaz de permanecer ni siquiera una semana en este enfermizo y controlador entorno. Pero tendrá que hacer de tripas corazón cuando aparece un cadáver en la casa y la IA se ve obligada a reportarlo a la policía local.

Las reflexiones sobre el futuro de la IA quizá se ven lastradas por la escasa longitud de la obra, pero son semillas que la autora va sembrando en la mente del lector para que cada uno vaya sacando sus propias conclusiones. Quizá el misterio en sí no sea lo más relevante del libro, pero sí que sirve como detonante de la narración, siendo vehículo conductor y el tejido conectivo que permite a Arkady Martine presentar sus ideas.

Una novela eminentemente atmosférica de lectura más que recomendable.

Rose/House is another incredible work of fiction from Arkady Martine. As a fan of her science fiction duology A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, I had high hopes for this novella and I was not disappointed. The book centres around just a few characters, one of which is a seemingly sentient AI-powered house, only permitted to let one human enter it after the death of its (her?) creator. Yet another human has entered, and died inside that house. The novella follows two detectives who have to find the architect's former protegee to gain entry into Rose/House, and inside the house, everything is not what it seems. Martine builds tension throughout this locked-door murder mystery, with an artificial intelligence that might not be trustworthy and a protegee who might have been driven mad by Rose/House. The novella is satisfying in how it reaches an unresolved conclusion - Rose/House is left operating as it was, and the case of the murdered human is never closed. Martine does this really cleverly - Rose/House is so eerie that the reader, as with the detectives, wants to leave it alone. Ultimately, this is a novella about fear, deception, and toxic relationships, as much as it is about the inescapable creep of AI.

Rose House is more than just an AI house, it’s an architectural wonder. Since the architect died only one person, Selene, is allowed entry but Rose House rings the local precinct to say that there’s a dead man inside. Detective Maritza Smith must investigate. This was a clever and thoughtful read, a bit philosophical, a bit insane and also quite beautifully written. It could’ve been longer!

I love horror about AI and sentient houses so was super excited for this, it felt more speculative than horror, however the atmosphere and setting were incredibly creepy, the ambiguity also plays a big part in the uneasy feeling whilst reading, this isn't a straight forward sci fi thriller, it's more a commentry on consciousness and creation, overall i thought this was great, kind of like Shirley Jackson meets I Robot with a dash of agatha christie, the only downside would be the length! my full review will be posted on my spot on the blog tour!

3.5 stars rounded up!

Rose/House strangely feels like a haunted house story, though a deconstructed one has all the hallmarks while not relying on the tropes or stereotypes of the genre. Its main focus is on an AI program running the house of a late famous architect, isolated in the desert and closed off from the rest of the world. This program, named Rose House after the building, is very much the star of the show - picking up the stubborn and imperious nature of its creator, it toys with the human characters who underestimate its intelligence. Whilst I struggled to connect to any of the other characters over the short runtime, I can forgive the novella for this due to the chilling and intriguing development of the AI character itself.

I felt there was a fair bit of background noise to Rose/House which I felt made the story less sleek and focused. The story is arguably a rapid-fire murder mystery, with a body turning up in the house despite the fact its AI guardian denies almost everyone entry. I wouldn’t recommend the novella purely for the mystery though, since this storyline almost fades into the background in favour of understanding the house’s character. The same could be said for the shady businessmen, roving reporters and resentful heir to the house; the book felt cluttered with a lot of stuff going on that didn’t really resolve. The highs of Rose/House are great, and I just wish the story was a little more focused without all the other underdeveloped bits on the side. Thank you to Pan Macmillan and to NetGalley for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review!

A novella-length homage to Shirley Jackson (Haunting of Hill House) with touches of William Gibson (three words: rogue Andorran hackers) and even Lovecraftiana (unnatural architecture that will drive you maaaaaaaaaad) that is absolutely slathered in portentious vibes and Martine's typically lovely prosody. Yet despite these promising ingredients Rose/House never really coheres into more than an evocative wisp of tone and style.

This is, of course, absolutely on point for a story about avant garde architecture and professional aesthetes, but it's not the kind of joke Martine seems to be aiming for despite the story's occasional flashes of referential humour*. There's a lot of ambition here, but I'm left feeling Rose/House might have been better either as a full book with enough time to unpack its many internal tensions, or a short story just coasting on impact. Instead, we've got just enough space to glue the aforementioned bundle of influences together with some wobbly worldbuilding, florid gothic style and Martine's authorial voice relentlessly (if effectively) horror-whispering at you how very uncanny and abreal everything is.

The problem is, if you look past that voice it's not clear if Rose/House's story stands up. Either Rose House is truly some kind of AI marvel (the kind of breakthrough regularly devised by...architects?) which the characters are improbably sanguine about, or the house is a reasonably normal part of these characters' world, if perhaps a bit unusual. The horror elements only really work if these supposedly late-22nd century characters are basically just stock 2020s humans, cops and robbers who are just fundamentally unprepared for the dangers of a world of nanobots and self-directed intelligence. It's easy to overlook this in the face of all that ominous prose, but once you see past Rose/House's one trick there's really only a trick of the light.

* A famous meme is literally acted out on page and I....honestly don't know what to feel about this.