- The Good: A house that’s also an AI
- The Bad: Lacking in character or plot
- The Literary: Flowery gothic prose
Rose House, a house embedded with artificial intelligence, calls Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct to report the presence of a dead body. It’s not unusual for houses to have AI, but Rose House has been empty a year, it’s architect having passed on, the will clear that Rose House is its own primary keeper. The only exception is Dr. Selene Gisil, the architect’s former student, who comes to the house to look through files and sketches once a year. But the dead person isn’t the architect or his student, and someone is dead inside of an impenetrable empty house.
I really enjoy the atmospheric haunted house genre, and the addition of the sinister AI only adds to the creepiness. Set 150 years in the future, the house is isolated in the vast American desert. In order to get around the rules that only Dr. Gisil can enter the house, Detective Smith says she is a police AI herself.
Unfortunately, neither the locked-room mystery nor the characters live up to the atmosphere. I like the parallel that a hacked AI may be akin to the someone going crazy. But the story is unresolved and unsatisfying. There are too many unnecessary characters for the short length. The ornate gothic prose is somehow distant, pretty but in a way that doesn’t propel you through the story.
Recommended for fans of atmospheric haunted house stories or fans of the author.
Rose House, labyrinthine. In the non-light before dawn, there are soft footsteps in its hallways, across the floors of its halls and chambers; there are footsteps, no matter who is there to hear them. Rose House, singular, alone — turning in on itself.