The list of places you can find Arkady Martine’s new novella, Rose/House, are even slimmer than the book itself: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and, if you want a physical copy, some secondary retailer like eBay. Which is a shame, because the story it holds is a science-fiction story that is equal parts enchanting and chilling.
Maritza, one of two officers at the China Lake precinct, gets a call from Rose House, the maybe-too-smarthouse in the nearby California desert left more desert-y by climate change. Rose House has an extra deceased body, it says—a body besides that of its architect entombed in the house’s center, and this one has died of unnatural causes. Two big problems become immediately apparent to Maritza with this report. First, besides the architect, the only person allowed inside Rose House is his protegee, Selene. Second, Selene is not only alive but halfway around the world. For someone to have not only gotten into the house but subsequently killed means at least one person and probably two got around Rose House’s top-notch security measures.
Selene’s feelings about her former mentor are complicated, at best, and she can hardly stand to be in the house he essentially left to her. Still, Maritza doesn’t have to flex her investigation muscles too hard to get Selene to come back to at least help with body retrieval. When actually presented with the house, though, Selene’s complicated feelings coil themselves into tighter knots. Maritza, too, quickly learns how deeply the house can embed itself into a person, and how fragile reality can be inside its walls.
The science-fiction here is all horizon-close. My brother-in-law loves to show off how he can turn his lights off and on, pull up his security camera feeds, and lock or unlock his house from his phone; my sister and her husband tossed their Echo years ago because they thought Alexa was listening a little too closely. How much of a stretch is it, then, to envision a house in total control of every part of itself, and able to listen and respond to everything that happens in and around it? The water rations and thieves that populate the desert around Rose House are just icing on the plausibility cake. The dash of corporate espionage in the subplot feels even sharper this week as a certain billionaire is getting all crunchy over the competition from another billionaire.
This is not a horror novel, although many of the same elements have been rich fodder for that genre. It’s also not nearly as far-flung as Martine’s previous two books, both of which are well worth your time if you’re into political intrigue on a galactic scale. Though still solidly science fiction, this work is far closer to home, and its premise manages to be spine-tingling for the picture it paints—not bleak, exactly, but pragmatic to the point of irrationality, yet difficult to argue with. Its achingly beautiful prose only makes the thorns of this rose seem even sharper by comparison. By the end, I wasn’t chilled to the bone like Maritza, but I could feel the chill like rain through a windowpane. For such a short story, Rose/House packs a punch that will throb for a long time.
Ring Reads 