Arkady Martine is a great writer — I loved A Memory Called Empire — but this wasn't the novella for me. As always, her prose is beautiful, a real delight to read. She's smart, and playful in the way she weaves art and social critique into her stories. The reflections on how architecture relates to society and shapes a person's perspective of their environment were some of my favourite passages in this book.
The vibe of the novella is also fun — a haunted house version of Annihilation. While Vandermeer's book also featured a woman venturing forward into an alien and hostile world, the novel was propelled by the emotional interiority of the main character (why did she choose to go on that mission?). In contrast, Martine's protagonists are stock police drama characters, developed shallowly. Her novella's momentum is instead carried by the central mystery. And I just didn't find it a sufficiently captivating question. Maybe it's because some of what makes this mystery mysterious is the specific rules of Martine's sci-fi world, and at just 115 pages, Martine just doesn't give herself enough space to flesh out a world in which a dead body in an AI house becomes a real, engrossing mystery. Or maybe it is that I just don't care for police procedurals, no matter how clever the writer.
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