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A review by peripetia
Rose/House by Arkady Martine
1.5
Words cannot describe how much I hated this book, but I will try anyway.
I don't understand how this book was written by the same author who wrote the Teixcalaan duology, one of my favorite scifi series/books of all time. Allow me to explain.
First, the scifi element in this book is laughable. When compared to Teixcalaan (which I will do whether I should or not), this is just rubbish. In the year 2200 or so electric cars are (mostly) driven by people, AI works and sounds like it's from 1995, and also used like in 1995. I listened to the audiobook and the AI house speaking just made me angry.
The police wander around investigating with no help from technology. One detective just googles stuff like "man + murder + lawyer". I'm sorry but that's so stupid considering how advanced AI is already and how predictable its development seems at the moment. At least motel rooms clean themselves, a detail that was absolutely irrelevant. It's like she didn't bother to research AI at all and yet decided to write a book about it, possibly trying to ride the wave of AI panic.
Could there have been an explanation of such devolved technological development somewhere in the book? Perhaps, but I got so distracted that I started seriously considering I had lost the ability to focus in audiobooks (I didn't).
The main reason for this was the prose. Martine dumps every possible absurd metaphor wherever and whenever she can. "Purple prose" is not a strong enough term to describe the writing. Here is a long passage to illustrate this:
I don't understand how this book was written by the same author who wrote the Teixcalaan duology, one of my favorite scifi series/books of all time. Allow me to explain.
First, the scifi element in this book is laughable. When compared to Teixcalaan (which I will do whether I should or not), this is just rubbish. In the year 2200 or so electric cars are (mostly) driven by people, AI works and sounds like it's from 1995, and also used like in 1995. I listened to the audiobook and the AI house speaking just made me angry.
The police wander around investigating with no help from technology. One detective just googles stuff like "man + murder + lawyer". I'm sorry but that's so stupid considering how advanced AI is already and how predictable its development seems at the moment. At least motel rooms clean themselves, a detail that was absolutely irrelevant. It's like she didn't bother to research AI at all and yet decided to write a book about it, possibly trying to ride the wave of AI panic.
Could there have been an explanation of such devolved technological development somewhere in the book? Perhaps, but I got so distracted that I started seriously considering I had lost the ability to focus in audiobooks (I didn't).
The main reason for this was the prose. Martine dumps every possible absurd metaphor wherever and whenever she can. "Purple prose" is not a strong enough term to describe the writing. Here is a long passage to illustrate this:
A room is a sort of narrative. The passage in and out of a room. The constraints of action within it. What is moved and what is left alone. The composition of the shape of a person, superimposed against the frame of the built-in environment.
Once, clever men, mostly men, dreamed that the frame within which people dwelled might describe their behavior, their ways of loving, their ways of working, their interdependence or solitude. All purpose built, all shaped. Those men tended to be wrong. The did not consider the superimposition of frame.
A room is a sort of narrative when intelligence moves through it, makes use of it, or is constrained by it. Otherwise, it is in abeyance, and an intelligence has its own designs. The street makes its own uses for things. This is something Maritza knows, though she doesn’t know she knows it.
(Note: I listened to the audiobook and wrote this down, so it might have some mistakes when it comes to punctuation, for example.)
There was a seed of an idea in this book, but the plot was all over the place and flat as hell. There was no thriller or horror. I can't tell what <i>was</i> in there.
I guess the author whipped this up in a blender to deliver something to an editor in order to fulfill her contract, trying to reach a set wordcount with redundant metaphor after redundant metaphor. I can't imagine any other reason for such a half-baked attempt at a novel from a writer like Martine.