A solid performance but personally, not as engaging as The Mimicking of Known Successes.

I will say that I found the world building to be consistently interesting. Set in the far future, Earth’s descendants have colonized Jupiter with the main goal of one day returning to their home planet. In the meantime, life goes on right? People make a living, people have longings and desires, and people are still subject to and perform crimes.

This focused a bit more on the romantic relationship between investigator Mossa and her on and off paramour, scholar Pleiti. The main mystery is again a missing person and how these two work together since it involves a student from the university that Pleiti works at.

Again, I enjoyed the unique set up and the push pull of the relationship (though it would serve Mossa and Pleiti to actually communicate their wants and needs. Despite being nicely consistent in tone, I was often stymied by Older’s word choice. Where I found the first book quite charming as an audio, seeing the actual words on page were often cumbersome, confusing, and tiresome as I eventually just tried to infer what she meant instead of using my kindle’s dictionary function, many times discovering that terms were made up or foreign words that were Spanish, French, Portuguese, and possibly more.

Should Older continue with these two protagonists, I would appreciate a more mature relationship progression, a different type of mystery, and Mossa’s POV. It’s time to get further insight into this interesting character, to see how her mind works as well as how she feels about Pleiti. That would be a nice change of pace.

Having said all that, I still really like the premise of this piece of science fiction that blends mystery, sapphic romance, and an odd mix of propriety and historical overtones as humanity continues to thrive on a new planet. Just so we’re clear, I wouldn’t say no to the next book despite my frustration with this second installment.

Thank you to the author and Tordotcom Publishing via NetGalley for an ebook in exchange for a review posted to Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6198563341?book_show_action=false

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

3.25/5 stars

I'm so torn on this series - I love the concepts and the writing isn't bad, and I think the length is right - but man they can be tough to read sometimes because of the language and formatting changes. Using a lot of obscure and “$100 words”, even some that were made up...I understand that our POV is a highly educated scholar, hundreds of years in the future on a different planet....but feeling dumb so often when reading is frustrating, especially when there are a lot words that simply don't exist.

But overall, this was a fun Sherlockian mystery that I enjoyed reading. The characters were interesting, the breadcrumbs to the culprit were better fleshed out than the first, and I enjoyed learning more about the world. The premise, world building, and commentary on how we treat our planet continued to be fantastic as well.

This series shows so much promise but it is a bit overwritten with confusing language - enjoyable overall but needs a bit of tweaking to be fantastic.

I really want to love this series; I usually dig a Holmes-like, the setting is absolute top tier, and cozy scifi mysteries with sapphic main characters is like 100% my jam.

But I think I just don't like Pleiti very much. The way she's always frustrated at Mossa for, basically, being autistic, bums me out. Mossa deserves better tbh. Also the first-person POV is so jarring. Both books open with a third-person POV of Mossa, and it's effortless to read, and then we switch to Pleiti for the rest of the book and it just never clicks for me. I wish the framing device of this being Pleiti's journal or whatever, was established better at the beginning, rather than just sprinkled in occasionally.

Also also, the amount of words I've never heard before per page is just, unrivaled. Never felt less literate than when Pleiti is thinking her thoughts.

2SLGBTQIA+ Science Fiction Mystery Novella located on Jupiter in which an enigmatic investigator teams up again with her scholar girlfriend to find seventeen missing university students and staff members.

5/5 stars: This is the second entry in Older's Mossa & Pleiti series and if you like Holmesian British Cozy mysteries but gay and set in space, then be sure to pick up this novella. With plenty of twists and turns, Older has crafted a mystery that isn't really something the reader's meant to "solve" but the investigation is an incredibly engaging read. Older's characters are complex and interesting and the 2SLGBTQIA+ romantic tension is well-done and believable. I very much like seeing the development of Mossa and Pleiti's relationship. And it's interesting seeing Pleiti's dealing with the consequences of the previous books events and how they've affected her personally and professionally. The world building is extremely well done and provides an atmospheric sci-fi read. I really liked seeing the difference between the settlements of Io, Mossa's home, and Giant (Jupiter). I will say that the literary slant to the verbiage is unique and may not be for everyone and Older's use of multi-lingual words without explanation can be jarring. Overall this is a charming and quick read that anyone interested in Cozy mystery or science fiction will enjoy. While you could read this as a stand-alone, you'll gain so much more by reading the series from the beginning; so be sure to pick up book one, The Mimicking of Known Successes.

I received this eARC thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom in exchange for an honest review. Publishing dates are subject to change.

A cute and cozy sapphic fantasy/scifi mystery? So many things that I love, all woven together into one book!

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, unfortunately this follow-up was such a disappointment. I don't know if the excessive writing style was used to further characterize Pleiti as a scholar, but the writing style seemed to drown in being unnecessarily wordy and using as many large or uncommon words as possible. The second downer was Pleiti's constant internal dialogue that centered only around Mossa - what Mossa thought of them, what Mossa was feeling, did Mossa love me, etc. It was, quite frankly, exhausting to read. New relationships are hard, sure, and everyone has insecurities. But the plot was overshadowed by Pleiti's constant need to be reassured that they were still in a relationship. Probably will not be continuing with this series if there are more, which is a bummer because I had truly enjoyed the world and society that Older had built in the first book.

I loved Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes. The second Mossa and Pleiti novella, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles was also a delightful read.

There was a moment in the story when I thought back to a conversation I had years ago with a much younger cousin who was still in his 20s. He began expounding on his desire to live somewhere that tested his grit, a place with “real” problems, like on the gritty prestige cop shows he watched. I didn’t point out all the very real problems that his home city of Austin faces, or point out that he didn’t need to look outside himself to find “real” problems that could use some attention. He was not sober at an early hour of the day and he wasn’t going to listen. I was equally annoyed and broken hearted. I thought a lot about that interaction while reading The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, about how some people romanticize hardship as if living through it makes us more valid.

After the resolution of the previous mystery, Mossa and Pleiti are cautiously a couple, visiting each other from their respective home platforms. Pleiti is still processing the violence she experienced and the anxiety over the impact of [redacted]’s actions. Mossa arrives one evening with a new case – too many people are missing from Valdegeld to be within normal. She wants Pleiti’s help to see if there are connections between them that she is missing.

As readers, we spend a lot of time in Pleiti’s head. The actions of [redacted] are driving her to reconsider the accepted wisdoms of her course of scholarship – combing literature from Earth to replicate a pre-industrial, self sustaining ecosystem. As Pleiti has engaged with Mossa’s cases, she’s seen a darker side of her university – thoughtless romanticization protected by a powerful institution. Is Older moving Pleity to more thoughtful radical ideas about returning to Earth? There’s a tension in the books between looking backwards and looking forwards.

I have been fighting with myself about giving this four or five stars. On its own, there are bits of the mystery that felt anticlimactic, but I suspect in context with later installments I would be able to say, “ah, I see where this fits.” But I don’t have those later installments yet, and I can’t remember the motivation of this book’s antagonist. Mossa and Pleiti are always 5 stars, and Pleiti’s language is so delightfully cerebral. I hope there are more installments.

Reading challenges:

The Diverse Baseline Challenge, January Prompt B: A book by a Latine author. Pleiti doesn’t think deeply about how culture moved from Earth to the human habitations around Jupiter, but Malka Older did.

Irene Davis’ 2024 read Softer Challenge: Read out loud. This book was a joy to read out loud. I loved Pleiti’s scholarly language.

CW: Nightmares about past traumatic incidents, homophobia (challenged and countered on page), murder, discovery of a corpse, references to precarious nature of human habitations.

I received this as an advance reader copy from Tordotcom and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.

I love what a mix of genres this Sapphic sci-fi/mystery/detective/space opera romance series is! Another highly entertaining blend of action and adventure featuring Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti who are reunited to solve a missing persons case. Quick and fun and great on audio too! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review! Recommended for fans of Becky Chambers.

Blog Link goes live Feb 9th
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TL;DR: Maybe not as good for me as book one, but still a very fun adventure, with more world building and a bit more relationship building.

I truly enjoyed The Mimicking of Known Successes last year, I thought it was a new and fresh take on the Holmesian style mystery. The novellas are set on Jupiter, the rings that orbit Jupiter, where the last of mankind established a new colony after fleeing a destroyed Earth. Mossa and Pleiti, our Sherlock and Watson, are old friends from school who cross paths after Mossa is sent to investigate murders. From there they get into hijinks and now they’re back at it.

This time the problem that faces Mossa is a disappearance which quickly leads to more. Mossa approaches Pleiti and asks if she would perhaps be her official civilian assistant (a thing the Investigators of this settlement are allowed to have) and the two begin to work the case. In truth, one of my favorite pieces in this is we spend almost the entirety of the book following just Pleti. Mossa is there for a good chunk but Pleiti spends a lot of time independently investigating around campus and it was with all the love in the world that I thought ‘Look at this poor woman stumble into harm’s way’.

In addition to focusing a lot on Pleti this one takes an interesting look at the idea of self reliance. Which, while writing this, I realize is probably also reflected in Pleiti working alone for a good chunk. We visit Io, Jupiter’s moon where another portion of the citizenry live, and we learn about the divide between them, what caused it and how it plays into our disappearances.

If you enjoyed the first book, I definitely recommend this as a pick-up. I think it’s strength lies in it’s world-building as opposed to it’s mystery but it’s well worth it. We see Pleiti grow, and just for fun Malka Older throws in some great mentions of current SF stories (Murderbot and her own Infomocracy appear as plays/musicals in the world).

4 out of 5 creepy cats from the Cat Club

I hope this series continues! The world-building the author creates in these books is just so good. I feel really captured by the society and environment that Pleiti and Mossa are part of.

This writing in this book still feels a bit clunky, like I said in my review of The Mimicking of Known Successes but I found it easier to settle into this time. I think at times it also still struggled with trying to fit into the Holmes/Watson inspiration. Looking past all that though, it is a really good science fiction story. The mystery element of this one isn't quite as strong as the first book, but really does you make think about things happening in our real world.

Pleiti is wonderful and I enjoy her point of view, and her thoughts around what type of relationship she has and what expectations and boundaries are part of that relationship. Mossa can still be abrasive and impulsive, but really tries for Pleiti and it makes their interactions sweet and they feel like a real couple. There are bits of this story that show how much they care for each other, and how much they can compliment each other in both their intimate and working relationship. There are awkward moments but also really tender, lovely moments.

Like I said, I hope we get more stories in this world, I want to spend more time there!

Thanks to Netgalley for a digital copy of this book in exchange for a review!

After the stunning creative success that was The Mimicking of Known Successes, I was honestly a bit let down by this follow-up of Pleiti and Mossa's investigative adventures. This book had all of the same pieces as the first book - sci-fi worldbuilding, sapphic romance, grand philosophical ideas, and a mystery - but it ultimately lacked the heart of what made The Mimicking of Known Successes one of my favorites of last year. Somehow, and it feels a bit weird saying this as a reader, it is almost like this book missed the point of what made the first book such as a resounding triumph.

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles picks up a bit after the first book, and Pleiti and Mossa are now in committed relationship. The impetus of the book comes when Mossa starts to investigate a group of missing persons who are all affiliated with the university, and asks Pleiti to come on board as a special consultant on the case.

What this novella (short novel?) does really well is seamlessly expands upon the the world Older has created. We get a better since of the history of the human colonization of Jupiter, the social tensions between different groups of people, and the (perhaps useless) quest to return to Earth. Older's depiction of what a post-apocalyptic situation might be has always been masterful. She has always nailed the desire to return to a perceived homeland, even if you have no direct connection to it. None of the people who live on Jupiter, including Pleiti, have ever been to Earth. They have only known Jupiter from birth, and yet they still feel this alienation about their surroundings. They know that, based on all of the tech needed to just keep them alive, that they aren't meant to be there, and rather than enjoying themselves they find themsevles always seeking a return to a past they know little about.

This was the main theme of the first book, and Older continues it here while adding on an additional question - why as humans do we always make things harder than they need to be? Why do we always get in our own way and set up the titual "unnecessary obstacles"? Whether it is the macro, structural social problems that we have created for ourselves (internal divisions, classism, etc.) or the micro, individual elements (like when we have a perfectly good relationship but we have to make it hard for some reason), it seems that our species just thrives on extraneous hardship. Like the meme of the kid putting the stick in his own bicycle wheel, we just cannot help ruining perfectly good things.

On the whole this is a great theme for Older to explore in this futuristic world, and as the grand level of the "idea" it should really work. One of my biggest issues with this book is that the themes are just not seamlessly integrated. The philosophizing crosses the line to be a bit too academic, a bit too wordy, and ultimately overwhelms everything else. What made the first book such a treat was the way Older was able to explore big themes while also telling a cozy, Holmesian mystery with a sapphic romance. In this book, everything except the ideas get sidelined.

This ultimately makes for a book that is relatively boring and feels longer than its pretty short page count. The relationship between Pleiti and Mossa loses its spark, mainly because the characters themselves lose their spark. Mossa and Pleiti are separated from each other for large sections of the book, and honestly Pleiti (as a character) needs Mossa to "pop". I understand that the point of the book was that their relationship has progressed beyond the honeymoon phase, but they just didn't feel like characters to me. They instead felt like pawns on a board to get to the themes and ideas Older wanted to discuss.

It also didn't help that the mystery was not engaging. What starts off as a very interesting mass missing persons case quickly devolves into...nothing. There are many different ways to make an interesting mystery. Maybe it is a puzzled box, or a traditional whodunnit; but mysteries are only interesting if there is some element of the reader playing along. In this book there is no way for the reader to "play detective" with Mossa and Pleiti because the way information is given to the readers are so erratic. The book turned into the reader just following Mossa and Pleiti from place to place without any real narrative momentum and heft. The best parts of the book are the ones that don't involve the mystery, such as Mossa's background on Jupiter's moon Io. I maybe would have preferred the book without the mystery elements, but instead just diving into the relationship between these two women.

Ultimately this book was a bit of a miss for me. The ideas and worldbuilding are still strong, but it just lacks the core of what made the first book so great. I'm still on board for whatever Pleiti and Mossa have in store for the future, but I hope that any future books find that specialness again.

Concluding Thoughts: A short novel/novella that is big on ideas, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles finds academic Pleiti and detective Mossa on another case. The ideas are once again the star of this book, this time examining why and how we make are lives more difficult than they need to be, and why as a society and individuals we cannot be happy. Unfortunately the ideas are not as seamlessly tied into the characters or plot this time around. The characters don't sparkle and the mystery falls flat. This was a bit of a "sophomore slump" for this series, but I am hopeful it will return to its glory in the future!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy.
I liked the first of these, and I wanted to read this one--and it was even better than the first. No second-in-series slump for this! I loved the developing relationship, the mystery, and especially the fun little Easter eggs to other great scifi and fantasy books, even of Older's. Loved this, am a firm fan of this series, can't wait for more!
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Fair warning I did not read the previous book in the series. Still I understood this cozy sci-fi mystery quite well. Thanks for the arc.

This is a novella, and yet it is so utterly boring, inane, and confusing that it <i>still</i> took me literally 6 months to finish it. I cannot in good conscience recommend this, and I genuinely love sapphic scifi books.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, even more than the first one! I enjoyed that we followed Pleiti's POV for most of it, whereas in the first book we mostly followed Mossa. Seeing their relationship mature and develop through Pleiti's eyes was the most interesting part of the book for me. I also LOVED all of the world building details that Older puts into these stories. Humanity colonizing Jupiter after the Earth's ecosystem was destroyed is so unique, and Older's details with language and how society would've evolved from this was masterfully done. Can't wait for the next book from Older!

I really enjoyed the The Mimicking of Known Successes and so I was so excited to see this followup! And I wasn't let down. I appreciated the sapphic rep in the science fiction setting of Jupiter, a cozy Sherlockian mystery, and most of all the dynamic with Mossa and Pleiti. I'll be sure to tell my friends who I think this is a good fit for. Thank you for this ARC!

I loved The Mimicking of Known Successes so much that I started reading this follow-up on the first blustery late-fall day, excited to immerse myself in tea and scones and mystery. I loved how the steampunk tea-and-trains-and-Jupiter world of Mossa and Pleiti continues to develop in this second installment. Instead of just another mystery set on the gas giant, we get to see a different aspect of the world, illuminating its history and social structures.

The prose is one of the book's standout elements. Pleiti's formal narration gives rise to many lovely and provocative turns of phrase, including the title of the book. Her vernacular borrows many words from non-English languages, especially to describe food items, which contributes to the story's atmosphere - but readers who find translation unwieldy could bypass them without losing any plot. As an academic, Pleiti is connected to the mystery only through her partner, Mossa, and her thoughtful remove gives the story more depth.

I adore this series - this book has a slightly slow start, as it takes a bit to fully adjust to the unique world that Older has built, but once I got back in the mode, I couldn't stop smiling. I love both characters, I love Malka Older's writing - she is so sharp and smart and FUNNY, and I love the complicated world-building and politics. An autobuy series.

Just as good as the first - if you enjoyed that you’ll likely enjoy this. The mystery is a bit out of focus this time around, feeling more like a background to kickstart some world building and character work. The is more Pleiti’s book than Mossa’s in many ways, with the two of them split through much of the narrative and the story remaining with Pleiti.

The Mimicking of Known Successes was one of my top reads in 2023, and I was so excited for this follow up to the Holmesian coziness that is Mossa and Pleiti solving a mystery. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles takes place some time after the first novella, and Mossa and Pleiti are in something of a relationship. Mossa is assigned a missing person case at Pleiti's university, and the two begin to investigate it together.

Older manages to blend a sci-fi setting with the comfort of reading a Holmesian mystery with ease. There is an equal amount of attention given to the mystery itself as well as to Pleiti and Mossa (though Pleiti's eyes) as characters. In this second novella, we also get to see Pleiti navigate her relationship with Mossa; she often has trouble with her own perception of what their relationship really is, and with trying to fit Mossa's whole Holmes-ish character within the relationship they're building. But then Mossa smiles and Pleiti's lovestruck by it and they're incredibly adorable.

I would say that the one thing that brought it down a star for me compared to the first novella is that the world building felt like it took over a little more this time around, instead of feeling a lot more natural within the storytelling. But I truly enjoy this world Older has created, this future colony living in the orbit of Giant (aka Jupiter), growing and surviving and thriving even as they try to figure out if they can ever inhabit Earth again.

I highly enjoy this series and its weird but interesting blend of sci-fi and mystery. Seasoned sci-fi and mystery readers should definitely give it a chance if you haven't already.

Many, MANY thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for giving me the chance to read and review this! The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles will be available on February 13, 2024.