Rose/House - by Arkady Martine (Hardcover)

About the Book

"All of Basit Deniau s houses were haunted. Rose House, his final architectural triumph built in the remote Mojave desert, was perhaps the most. A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing. But a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every crevice and corner with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. That is Rose House."--Publisher description.

Book Synopsis

Rose/House is a breathtaking and taut sci-fi gothic thriller from Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire.

"I'm a piece of architecture, Detective. How should I know how humans are like to die?"

All of Basit Deniau's houses were haunted. Rose House, his final architectural triumph built in the remote Mojave desert, was perhaps the most.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing. But a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every crevice and corner with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. That is Rose House.

When Detective Maritza Smith gets a call from Rose House, she's shocked to learn that there is a dead body behind its sealed-up door. Everybody in town knows it's haunted. But Basit died more than a year ago, and everybody also knows that only his former protege, Dr. Selene Gisil, is permitted inside. But Selene wasn't in the country when Rose House called in the death. Who is the dead body? How did they get in? And who--or what--killed them?

The answers lie within the labyrinthine halls of Rose House. But even if Martiza can get inside, there is no guarantee she will ever be able to leave ...

Also by Arkady Martine:
A Memory Called Empire
A Desolation Called Peace

Review Quotes

A 2024 HUGO NOMINEE FOR BEST NOVELLA

"Martine's soaring, crystalline prose evokes Shirley Jackson's Hill House if designed by Frank Gehry. She builds a twisted cathedral of story and fills every inch with equal parts beauty and a creeping, inescapable sense of wrongness. Readers will be floored."
--Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"Not only is it a great haunted house novel, but Martine's exceptional eye for structures and systems (as seen in her Teixcalaan series) really shines here as she looks into architecture and design and the way such things shape our very perceptions of the world."
--Drew Broussard, LitHub

"Tight and unsettling...a story that's stylish, discomforting, and strangely believable... Rose/House is a freaky love letter to architecture, weird and otherwise."
--Jake Casella Brookins, Locus

"[Haunting of Hill House is] a hard act to riff on without simply producing a lesser version, and yet Rose/House manages it dramatically and delightfully."
--Reactor

"While a mystery story raises questions in order to answer them and reset order in a disordered world, Rose/House deconstructs that process and reassembles the pieces into something other - or perhaps Other. The spirit that haunts this story is not that of the locked-room puzzle but something stranger and not at all reassuring."
--Russell Letson, Locus

"This atmospheric, eerie, and thought-provoking narrative will entice readers to finish the story in one sitting."
--Booklist

Praise for A Memory Called Empire

"A mesmerizing debut . . . it left me utterly dazzled."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Exquisite . . . a compelling journey with a rich world and fascinating characters"
--The Los Angeles Times

"Interesting, detailed, lavish."
--The Wall Street Journal

"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it."
--Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice

"In A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine smuggles you into her interstellar diplomatic pouch, and takes you on the most thrilling ride ever."
--Charlie Jane Anders, author of All The Birds in the Sky

"[A] gorgeously crafted diplomatic space opera . . . Readers will eagerly away the planned sequels to this impressive debut."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Politics and personalities blend with an immersive setting and beautiful prose in a debut that weaves threads of identity, assimilation, technology, and culture to offer an exceedingly well-done sf political thriller."
--Library Journal, starred review

"This is both an epic and a human story, successful in the mode of Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee. A confident beginning with the promise of future installments that can't come quickly enough."
--Kirkus, starred review

About the Author

Arkady Martine is the Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. She is a speculative fiction writer and, as Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, a historian of the Byzantine Empire and a city planner. She currently works on clean energy policy and utility regulation in New Mexico. Under both names, she writes about border politics, rhetoric, propaganda, and the edges of the world. Arkady grew up in New York City and, after some time in Turkey, Canada, Sweden, and Baltimore, lives in Santa Fe with her wife, the author Vivian Shaw.