Saturday, December 31, 2022

Rose/House by Arkady Martine


A new Arkady Martine book? Yes! Yes! Yes!


I loved loved loved A Memory Called Empire when it came out.  It was stunning and wonderful and I didn’t want it to end.  It was everything I wanted in a space opera - politics and romance and space stations and aliens beyond the edge of known space.  It brought back all of those good Babylon 5 feels.  And A Desolation Called Peace was a fantastic follow up that I also loved to pieces. So I was beyond overjoyed when I got an eARC from Subterranean Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  


Rose/House did not disappoint. Unlike her earlier work, this book was not space opera. Instead it is a near future sf world with a smart house’s AI haunting a deceased architect’s masterpiece. The characters were perfectly drawn in just a few pages, yet they continued to reveal more depth and nuance as the story progressed. I could not put this down. One of the best things I read all year.