a sci-fi novella with a missing person in space?!!! sign me up! I enjoyed this novella and you should read this too.

I really enjoyed this take on a Sherlock Holmes-style tale. We have our aloof, thinking ten steps ahead but doesn't bother to explain it investigator and the long-suffering, loyal, good-at-research and academia companion. The mystery is satisfying, but their relationship and all the subtle emotional undertones are where it's at.

I love a good alternate, modern, queer take on Holmes, and so naturally I greatly enjoyed this. The expected dynamic between 'Holmes' (Mossa) and 'Watson' (Pleiti) is there, but shifted to be more obviously queer. All of the relationship progress is very subtle and in teh background, but I love when authors do that so it worked for me.

The worldbuilding is incredible. We have a world of swirling gases, tram cars and platforms rising out of the fog. It's eerie and beautiful and has a gaslamp sort of feel to it. Even in this alien setting, a university is a university and the politics and daily life of an academic are captured perfectly.

The audiobook performance is understated and fits well with the world and the characters. It was a very enjoyable way to experience the story.

I look forward to more stories in this series.

*Thanks to NetGalley and TorDotCom for providing an early copy for review.

This novella effectively captures a Holmesian feel in its parameters and tone, but in some ways that strength is also its underlying weakness. The two main characters did not feel like unique beings; they felt like slight variations of Holmes and Watson. Similarly, the characters felt gender neutral rather than female – which is not a problem for a queer romance, except for the explicit descriptor applied to the novel as ‘sapphic.’

The world building also could have been improved. The setting of Jupiter is clear and does influence the world, particularly the motivation of the criminals, but the rest is almost too familiar. Or, put another way, the conventions of being on Jupiter and its consequences are touched on, but don’t feel fully explored. Maybe a longer work could have added more detail, or maybe that’s just something I personally would have enjoyed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to the free advanced digital copy of this book.

Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes is a lovely cozy mystery and sapphic romance in a tonally nearish-future SF setting. If, like me, you struggled a bit with author Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle trilogy (I admit I haven’t made it past the first book, Infomocracy), please consider giving this novella a try. It was one of my favorite things to read this year.

One of the reasons I had stumbled during Infomocracy was the multiple characters and POVs – sometimes I’m good with that, but I started reading it in 2019, not a great year for me to be challenging myself during leisure time. But TMoKS starts with a tight-focus third-person narrative focused on Mossa, a professional detective, and switches to a first-person narrative from Pleiti, a scholar, so it’s a lot easier to track what’s happening (although intentions and motivations aren’t revealed for quite a while).

Also helping with the ease of reading is that although this is science fiction, the tone feels like gaslamp Victorian/Edwardian-style fiction, minus the racism and sexism (there’s still some degree of classism, though, at least with some characters being arrogant about their academic status). Humanity has moved to Jupiter after wrecking the Earth’s environment, with a series of platforms in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant that are connected via a rail system. So as Mossa and Pleiti follow leads from platform to platform, it reminds me a lot of various Sherlock Holmes mysteries where he and Dr. Watson move about tEngland via rail. Also, Pleiti’s university quarters provide tea and scones by the fireside as a welcome warm-up for the pair in Chapter 1, so the mystery is literally cozy.

It is also pretty hot in places! Mossa and Pleiti are ex-flames from college, who had a bad breakup. The two have very different interests, competencies, and personalities, but the heat is still there; at least we see that on Pleiti’s side before too long. And when one of them is injured, the other helps bathe the wound clean and has to struggle to keep her mind, emotions and voice under control… Fortunately, frustrations are eventually resolved satisfyingly – but I definitely want to see this relationship continue to progress in future stories.

As for the mystery, I love how it spins up step by step (with a few twists and turns along the way) from a missing person to a case with much broader implications. Some SF mysteries are basically just present-day puzzles with a technological gloss, but the futuristic setting here is integral to the mystery and to people’s motivations, and the complex details of the worldbuilding (from simple elements like an atmoscarf that helps one breathe outside, to vital plot-spoilery ones) really immerse the reader into the story.

Incidentally, the title comes from humans on Jupiter trying to figure out how to recreate Earth’s environment – Pleiti’s Classics discipline actually centers not so much on interpreting literature as on using literature to infer whole working ecologies, such as cataloging plant life in (implied) Watership Down. It’s certainly not cozy to imagine the devastated Earth, but I’ve been reading some other “cozy catastrophes” lately, where the coziness lies in survivors starting small and building futures together, and this fits that description.

Older has said that she set out to write a comfort read, and I believe she succeeded masterfully. Worldbuilding, mystery, characters and romance combine delightfully in this novella. I eagerly await the sequel in February 2024, and, fortified by this lovely story, I may even return to the Centenary Cycle.

The Mimicking of Known Successes, available here from Barnes & Noble, has a sort of subtitle these days: “The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti Book 1.” Yes, that means there is a follow-up coming! The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is available now for preorder. I am definitely looking forward to reading that!

Content warnings: Violence, death, past background environmental catastrophe, sexy scenes (not graphic).

Comparisons: C.L. Polk’s Even Though I Knew the End (noirish f/f romance-fantasy-mystery), Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit (mostly cozy m/m romance-SF with some mystery), P. Djeli Clark’s A Master of Djinn (steampunk-mystery with f/f romance).

Disclaimers: I received a free ARC of this novella from NetGalley. IIRC, I may have had a few very brief exchanges with Older on social media.

This short sci-fi mystery is billed as a sapphic Holmes and Watson story and delivers very well on that premise.

Although, at first, this is Holmes (Mossa) and Watson (Pleiti) if Watson was simultaneously sexually attracted to Holmes and had had enough of his shit!

The main mystery plot is centred on a missing academic and a possibly-unconnected dead homeless man, but the real meat of the story revolves around the issue of returning to Earth at some point in the future, with Pleiti basically taking the same approach in both her professional and personal life of attempting to replicate the actions of the past but with a more successful outcome.

The futuristic society of platforms and aircars, above Jupiter’s toxic surface, feels well-constructed and the society inhabiting it feels only too believable and not as far in the future as I would hope.

While a little bit dry and literary in style at times, the whole story concept is interesting and well-executed, and definitely worth a try for Conan Doyle fans looking for a bit of sapphic sci-fi with their Sherlockian sleuthing.

Very well-realized setting with a lot of fun details; I loved the high tech world (gas giant colony where people live on platforms at habitable altitudes and wear atmoscarves to filter the air for them) with low tech daily life (gas heating, no wireless communication as a result of the dense atmosphere). A kind of gaslamp noir sci fi vibe.

It was billed as a sapphic romance, which it isn’t really. Sapphic, yes, romance, ehhh. It’s about two women who used to be close friends and romantically involved, working together to solve a mystery/crime/conspiracy and re-forging their relationship in the process. But it’s just not steamy and didn’t really have me invested in their romantic recoupling. I think it honestly would have been more interesting if it was just about two adults learning how to be friends again while working together after a years-ago falling out. I really liked the two main characters and their respective hangups and quirks and competences, and their relationship was interesting even without the romance aspect.

Weird pacing/reveal at the end, I didn’t totally buy the evil plot; it just seemed a little clunky and hard to hide such a big resource-heavy undertaking. I feel like such a mission would require many more people, expertise, planning than the couple of conspirators that were revealed.

It didn’t come together perfectly but it wasn’t too rough around the edges either. I would definitely read more from this author and will keep an eye out for the next book in the series.

Long drawn out, mystifying story of seeking unmotivated resson for death off a railway platform .. even the 'victim' wasnt very appealing .. not being prepared to understand the contexts, or even which first person was talking, I could see distant echoes of sherlock Holmes and Watson.. but I was completely befuddled and stopped! I must have missed something ..

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. This book had a little bit of everything - sapphic romance? Check. Murder mystery? Check. Western-y feels? Check! I loved the world-building and getting to envision how a colony on a gas giant planet would be able to work. I'm excited to read the rest of the series when it comes out.

This is a cozy mystery that involves a second chance sapphic romance. I loved seeing the way the two main characters had grown, and how that growth made the second chance so much more poignant.
The world that was built was fascinating. Malka Older has clearly thought about the complexities that would come living above a planet, and the way the different communities would consider how to "reseed" a planet. On that subject, I loved the academic angles that were introduced about how the different though patterns were considered and how the funding showed which were more popular.
I raced through this book and I"m thrilled that a sequel has been announced.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Mimicking of Known Successes, and am very much looking forward to a sequel. This hits on that classic Holmes and Watson dynamic through a couple of sapphic exes, in an interesting and intriguing future world. Between learning about the mystery, the fascinating space station the story takes place on, and, most importantly, the complicated dynamic between the two main characters, this has been one of my favorite Tordotcom releases so far this year (and I don’t see it being unseated from that title by years end). Thank you so much to Tor/Macmillan and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older is a mystery set in a gas giant-circling habitat, featuring a lesbian detective and her former lover who’s now an academic specializing in the lost environments of Earth through literature (at one point, she’s studying Watership Down by Richard Adams, with its meticulous descriptions of flora known to rabbits). There’s a lowkey second chance romance woven into what, at first, seems like a locked room murder mystery but turns out to be much more complicated and unexpected. There’s a thematic undercurrent relating to how humans might cope with and adapt to have destroyed their home planet and left it behind.

A Sherlock Holmesian story in a Jovian spacepunk future, where 'Holmes' and 'Watson' are two ladies, and are exes that are definitely not over each other.

This novella has one very Holmes-ian lead, Mossa, who is rather neuroatypical and has her own way of thinking and making decisions, and one Watson-ish character, Pleiti. Back in their university days, the two were dating, and Mossa’s current case brings them back together, both unsure of what exactly they want from it. I could’ve done with just a little more focus on that and how they work together, but in general I think it worked quite well: Pleiti’s feelings all being stirred up again really shows, at least, even if it’s a bit less obvious from Mossa’s side.

As far as the world goes, it’s a fascinating idea — there’s a sense of plenty of world-building in the background, plenty more space in which other characters are living and working. Sometimes that’s the downside of a novella: it feels too constructed, there’s no room to imagine that other characters are out there… or it goes too far and reveals too much complicated machinery, leaving the story feeling secondary. I think Older walks the line quite well here: there’s enough to whet the appetite, without being overwhelming.

The mystery itself unfolds in a rather Holmes-ian way, where the connections Mossa makes aren’t always obvious — though Pleiti is an intelligent Watson, and one who knows her Sherlock, and thus she puts things together to catch up with Mossa just in time.

I enjoyed it, and would definitely read more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for a copy of this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

I loved this noir-ish mystery from Malka Ann Older. Mossa is a Holmesian detective, better at unpicking the details of a crime than handling the niceties of interpersonal relationships. She recruits Pleiti to assist in getting to the bottom of a mystery centred around place Pleiti now works. The more they uncover, the deeper the mystery seems to run.

I really enjoyed the characterisations, and the growing relationship between Pleiti and Mossa. In addition to that, the world built in the novel is fascinating. A post-Earth society, on a barely survivable planet was a fascinating read.

If there are more stories to come for these two, I will absolutely be picking them up.

Highly recommend this one to people who enjoy a mystery, but don't need it to be over-the-top gritty.

3.5 stars

Space sci-fi isn’t usually my favorite genre to read, despite my love of all things Star Trek—I think because it’s often <i> hard </i> sci-fi, which doesn’t particularly interest me. <i> The Mimicking of Known Successes </i> drew me in because the plot is a traditional, Holmesian mystery, which just happens to be set in the distant future when humanity lives on platforms surrounding the gas giant Jupiter after fleeing Earth. The story is a very human one, the mystery all about interpersonal conflicts and greed and hope for the future, grounded by our detectives (Mossa an Investigator and Pleiti a scholar swept along for the ride) navigating their own relationship to each other and to society as a whole. Mossa and Pleiti do share some philosophical discussions about what it means to live on artificial platforms so far from the planet where they evolved, and what the future could or should look like re: returning to earth, but as Earth’s repopulation won’t take place in their own lifetimes it’s all theoretical, nicely distant from the much more urgent and compelling questions of <i> what do we owe one another as people </i> and <i> Can I kiss you, Pleiti? </i>

Much like the ACD Holmes stories from which it clearly takes inspiration, this mystery is not one that the reader is likely to be able to solve on their own. Too much is dependent upon factors of the alien world that the reader cannot possibly know. But Pleiti is an able narrator and following along with her thoughts, even when Mossa’s on another track entirely, is great fun.

The only thing I didn’t really care for was that the prologue is written in Mossa’s POV and the rest of the book is written from Pleiti’s POV. I spent the first few chapters expecting a Mossa POV chapter again and had to keep double-checking what mental voice I had reading as all the chapters are written in the first person, so it takes a few sentences of context clues to figure out that it is, in fact, still Pleiti we’re hearing from. I think I would have enjoyed the earlier chapters more had we not had Mossa’s first-person narration for the prologue.

I recommend if you are interested in environmental fiction, classic Holmes mysteries, sweet and clean sapphic love stories, or imagined futures fiction. A perfectly pleasant novella.

WLW Sherlock in space.

Quick read. Second chance romance. Nothing too complex. Good read to break up the monotony of dense sci fi/fantasy.

The author did a really good job of adding lore throughout the plot instead of info-dumping all at once in the beginning.

Character’s weren’t super deep, but I don’t think they needed to be.

Wonderful worldbuilding and characterization! This was a pleasure to read. The Jupiter setting was perfectly atmospheric and reminiscent of London's pea-souper fogs, but with a twist. I loved the way that this added to and heightened the sense of unease and mystery. Mossa and Pleiti's backstory was woven in well, and the layer of their feelings for one another raised the stakes in a way that felt true and that drew me in to their story. I can't wait for further instalments in this series!

The book is a bit of a hidden gem! I loved the steampunk flair it had, while maintaining that post apocalyptic, sci-fi air. Now Normally I do not like sci-fi. There’s something about it that makes my brain hurt in an unpleasant way. But this book wasn’t sci-fi enough to do that, it’s sci-fi in the sense that it’s not set on earth, that the characters are essentially living in space, but that’s about it.
In it, humanity destroyed earths environment centuries ago, leaving humanity with nothing to do but leave and find a new home. They did, but they cannot live on its surface, so instead they live on platforms that surround the planet(I think it’s Jupiter?) our main character is a scholar, an academic who’s job is to reconstruct what earth’s biomes might’ve looked like in the hopes of one day restarting it on earth. Her love interest is a Sherlock Holmes style Investigator, who needs her help looking into a missing persons case.
In fact, this novel very strongly reminded me of reading Sherlock Holmes in the best way.
I throughly enjoyed this book, however I felt that some parts were a little to convoluted and the pacing could’ve been better. 4/5 stars

This book was a super interesting twist on the Sherlock Holmes universe. It was set on the planet Jupiter after Earth collapsed. I very much loved the sapphic turn to Holmes and Watson. It was a refreshing take on the usual Holmes and Watson.