Rose/House

[psocoptera]

Rose/House, Arkady Martine, 2023 novella. I was keen to read this, thinking highly of Martine's work in the Teixcalaan duology, and excited when I found out it would be in the packet, since I hadn't been able to obtain it any other way. Unfortunately my high hopes did not play out and I found it tedious and confusing. I'm not really sure what Martine was going for other than "desert Gothic vibes" - it felt like there wasn't enough plot or worldbuilding for the length, and different people kept echoing certain phrases (like calling the AI character a "haunt") that I couldn't tell whether Martine meant as terminology in the world or just as coincidence/literary device. Maybe someone could do something interesting with the idea of a murder mystery with no suspects or clues or motives or answer, but this wasn't it. Or maybe there was an answer and it was just a boring answer? We had HAL over half a century ago, "killer AI" is not novel enough to carry a story, especially when literally everything else is just vague shadowy "there seem to have been some mysterious people here doing something and you will never know who or what or why", like, ok, then why should I spend my time reading about it, exactly. What is there for me to care about here.