I've loved this series, but this is the first misstep for me. A shame that it's also the longest. This one divides Pleiti and Mossa to give Pleiti some time to shine, and while it was the usual intricate mystery you'd come to expect, I did miss Mossa's presence a great deal. I'll happily read the next book in this series, but I hope the dream team is reunited once more for it.

It is no secret that I ADORE these neurodivergent Jupiter lesbians. Mossa is still inscrutable but depressed, Pleiti is still horny on main for Mossa but sulking about their situationship. So much so that she takes on a case of her own on the other side of the world. This one is a deeply academia-based plot, so your mileage may vary based on how compelling you find those dynamics. Personally, I was having a hard time caring much about the central mystery. My favorite part of revisiting this world is always just seeing more of it and how a post-Earth human society thrives on the edges of a gas giant. More than ever, the most fascinating part of this series for me is the multilingual slangs and how this society studies the history of Earthbound humanity and how to unlearn the limitations of having BEEN Earthbound. The central theme of what constitutes Classical and Modern studies in this world and their relative values is interesting, especially through the lens of an academic. The space detective element, however, is almost non-existent in this one. Thanks Tor and Netgalley for the eARC.

I continue to enjoy this series, particularly appreciating the rich use of languages and the relationship between the two female leads. The university setting on Jupiter feels fully developed.

It offers a compassionate treatment of depression.

Another incredible adventure for Mossa and Pleiti. I love how these mysteries turn out. The dynamic between Mossa and Pleiti is as charming as ever, and I cannot wait to see what comes next from Malka Older.

i love this series! it is so much fun and the world is built in such an awesome way!

mossa is certainly sorely missed for the first section of this book --- seeing the way mossa & pleiti interact and work out the mystery between the two of them is one of my favorite parts, and it's sad to see pleiti working on her own!

villette and petanj are great side characters and i hope they continue to appear, although i felt villette was pretty naive at times.

not my favorite of the series (mainly due to the conspicuous absence of my favorite character for part of the book) but definitely worth a read if you liked the rest of the series :D

Mossa and Pleiti return in their third outing of Malka Older's sapphic academic mystery set in the diasporic resettling of humanity on floating platforms above Jupiter. This volume moves the series forward both in terms of the mysteries, with Pleiti taking the lead this time at another university, and confronting the mental health issues (depression for Mossa, anxiety for Pleiti) in their developing relationship.

When Pleiti is asked by an old friend to help her solve a mystery at another university, Mossa refuses to go with her, too deep in a depression to be able to accommodate her. Pleiti stumbles through (what appears to be) a solo investigation, following her instincts and using what she can muster of Mossa's method, for the first half of the book, while the stakes and dangers continuously increase.

This book feels like it engages in some necessary growing pains for the series-at-large, putting Mossa and Pleiti more into standard cozy mystery territory; at the end it moves to establish a new status-quo for Mossa that could feed in to more cases. However, it also feels uneven, particularly the longer Pleiti and Mossa are separated. Some of the narrative voice during the section of Pleiti's solo investigation even feels slightly out-of-character, but the book quickly regains its footing once the two romantic leads are reunited.

A lot of weight in the series has been given already to Pleiti's anxieties and doubts about Mossa's true feelings towards her, but this volume moves things forward by showing us Mossa's struggles with depression, and her own feelings of inadequacy in the relationship when mired in it. Navigating both of their mental health struggles, and trying to figure out how to be together with their challenges, is the emotional throughline of the book, and there's a lot of hope in how they're able to reconcile these issues by the end.

Overall I found this entry a little uneven, but still really enjoyable.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses Malka Older

I am really enjoying this series! I first started reading this series of novellas when the first one was nominated for a Hugo Award. I really enjoyed it and checked the second one out of the library shortly after I finished it and liked that a lot too! I’m all for a Holmes/Watson framework for a mystery, and I have loved SF mysteries since I discovered the Caves of Steel in junior high. I was excited when I got an eARC of this third volume from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The mystery in this book is not quite as fun as in the first two - frankly, by the time of the solution I had forgotten who several of the suspects were. I love the world building and the setting of these books, and the characters are the reason I keep coming back. I understand why the narrator is infatuated with Mossa- I love Mossa as a character- but Mossa is a terrible person to be in a relationship with and it shows (as, presumably, Sherlock Holmes would be a dreadful boyfriend). I enjoyed how academic research was key to solving the mystery. And I enjoyed just how terrible an investigator/interviewer the narrator was (I was also taking a science-based interviewing course for law enforcement while reading this book).

Bottom line - I will happily keep reading these as long as the author keeps writing them.

I love this series! It was nice to see Pleiti do some independent investigating in this installment, I think it was necessary for her to solve it herself in order for her to keep investigating mysteries alongside Mossa. I was a little bit wearied by the push and pull between them, especially when the last book left them on a high note.

The mystery itself kept me engaged. The expansion of the worldbuilding was exciting, and the ongoing philosophical questions about life on Jupiter—and on Earth—kept the new location and population a familiar world to return to. I will read as many of these as Malka Older wants to write!

The third installment in the Mossa and Pleiti series and the first longer (though still not LONG) installment. Did it need to be longer? Hm. Well, I don't know what, off the top of my head, I would cut out of it. That said, I don't think it hit any harder than the first two for having extra length.

I always enjoy seeing a new aspect of life on (around?) Giant, and Older does that again, this time going to a rival university of Pleiti's home institution--and partially without Mossa! I definitely did enjoy seeing Pleiti investigate on her own, both instituting what she thought Mossa would do and what felt best to her at any given moment. As always there's an interesting group of supporting characters to add color to the new environment and we even got a slight update as to background developments stemming from one of the previous installments. It DID feel like Older really amped up the language in this one; I'm not talking about the inclusion of Spanish words, but rather the made-up slang and also some just...very academic words, more so even than the academically-minded Pleiti normally used in previous books. I definitely encountered SEVERAL words here that I had to look up if they were real or something Older made up, and I do think we might have crossed the line from "atmospheric" to "slightly off-putting" with some of these choices.

That said, still a VERY enjoyable story as a whole. The "gaslamp investigation on Jupiter" setup is so unique and Older really has built this world so every installment can have its Holmesian core while still having very different settings and supporting casts, which is great.

I unfortunately cannot review this book because I learned too late that NetGalley changed their file type/DRM, and as a reader who uses a Kobo e-reader and NOT a Kindle, I cannot load the file onto my Kobo. I cannot utilize any of the other NetGalley provided options, as all the other options would mean reading on blue-light backed devices, and reading for long periods that way gives me headaches. I also will not use the "I will not be giving feed back for this book" option for this explanation, as I refuse to let a decision that NetGalley made (without any warning whatsoever to us reviewers) impact my overall feedback ratio that I work hard to maintain.

I hope this is met with understanding from the publisher, as I had every intention on reading and reviewing this title. I truly regret and am upset that I cant read this title, as it is one of my most anticipated books of the year, from one of my favorite ongoing series. I'll be buying this on release day and will enjoy it when I can finally read it.

This book series continues to be one that I feel torn over. There is a lot I love. The continued focus on diversity, in character background, food, language, dress, all of that is so lovely. The riffing on the narrative style of Holmesian works, and Mossa and Pleiti as Sherlock and Watson, are as usual great. Pleiti remains my favorite, no surprise as I have always been drawn more to Watson than Holmes. While others may feel differently, I liked that Pleiti's insights and skills were the highlight of this book.

This book, in particular, spoke to me as someone all too familiar with the world of academia. I thought the mystery here was much stronger than in previous books, and I was more motivated than in those entries to see it through to the end because of how much Villette was personally affected. Even those outside of academia can appreciate how often women who face stalking, aggressive attacks on their character, and increased violence are routinely ignored, which this book displays expertly. I also felt that the ramping up of tension and danger was done well. The ending was satisfying, especially with the promise of Mossa establishing her own consulting agency and Pleiti writing the adventures.

However, there are some themes and moments that just don't work. For example, there is a moment where a college Dean makes a slur about Mossa's origin (because she is from a moon?), which everyone immediately reacts to as a clear, openly offensive sentiment. But even with Pleiti stating that... I didn't catch what had happened or why exactly it was offensive, even after re-reading. Maybe it's a reference/discriminatory practice I SHOULD remember from having read the second book, but I don't. Similarly, there are several references to events that happened in the second book which, for me, were okay -- but someone who hadn't read them would likely not understand their significance. Now, anyone picking up the third in a series of books should expect, perhaps, to not fully understand all references made previously, but I feel like this was just thrown out very oddly.

All that said, I think these are fun books, and definitely there is an audience for them. I think anyone who enjoyed the previous books is likely to enjoy this one -- aside from some references, I do think this is a good jumping on point for new readers. I hope for more books in this series, hopefully as mostly stand alone adventures that don't rely on having read the previous entries.

Thanks to TorDotCom for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Not what I expected in the best way. Initially, I was disappointed in not having Mossa and Pleiti together in the first half. Then, I let go of my expectation in having Mossa involved in the investigation, and it helped me to see Pleiti as a singular character. While Pleiti yearns for Mossa, she tries to solve the mystery behind an accusation of plagiarism on a former classmate. Even though it was slow-going, Pleiti did a pretty good job finding suspects and eliminating possibilities. Mossa was dealing depression, which was hinted as a possible affliction for her in previous novellas, but this is the first time her depression has come in full force. I think both Mossa and Pleiti have dealt with this in a realistic way and left room for understanding for the future. The mystery was interesting and I couldn't guess the true perpetrator until the very end.

Overall, this was a really good installment in this sci-fi mystery series and cannot wait for the next one.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available for me.

This novella, the third in a series, continues with the main characters still tiptoeing around defining their relationship. The scientist half of this duo hares off to a distant settlement to try to help an old school friend whose professionalism is being attacked on multiple levels. We see more of the various major social and scientific factions, and maybe even some eventual progress in the relationship between our two protagonists. The ending of this book would tend to imply more stories in the works. Nice mystery that keeps you guessing.

4.5 stars rounded up. I was very excited for a novel-length Mossa and Pleiti book, even if it was a short novel, and it paid off quite well. The slightly longer length gives the author more time to explore the worldbuilding, the themes, and the characters, which was very much needed. While the previous two books in the series technically feel a bit more tightly written (in part because they're novellas, and they need to be), I greatly appreciated the breathing room that this book had, allowing us to really sit with the events of the book and what the characters were going through in a way that we haven't been able to do before.

Pleiti is off on another adventure, but this time Mossa isn't with her. This leads to a really lovely exploration of Pleiti as an investigator, trying to apply Mossa's techniques to a situation involving claims of academic fraud and increasing threats against a scholar. It is always a delight to see the "Watson" try to be the "Holmes", but what I truly loved about this particular iteration of the idea is that there is a realization that Pleiti needs to be Pleiti, and her own training is equally useful to an investigation, if in a different way than one might think. I really loved this outcome for Pleiti, and seeing her continue to grow is one of the best parts of this series. And while Mossa is largely not present for half of the book, her absence is certainly felt, and the weight of her character is never forgotten. The reunion between the two, and the mix of emotions about the situation, was very well-handled.

(I also loved that this was in many ways an homage to Hound of the Baskervilles, although not in the way one might expect.)

The mystery itself is solid, though slower than the other books because it has more time to be explored. The worldbuilding really gets to expand in this book, as we go to another university and see the reputation and rivalry that the universities have with each other, as well as the tensions between the Classicists and Modernists. We learn more about the different platforms of Jupiter and the cultures that those platforms have. We also see more of the impact of the events from the first book, in a way that has some promise as the series progresses.

One thing other reviewers have commented on, and which did strike me more than ever while reading, is the work that Older is doing with language. Older imagines a world in which language from Earth has evolved and changed, with different languages mingling together to create a new standard language. There were bits of this in previous books, but because this book is longer, it is much more present in the narrative. I didn't find it distracting or overwhelming, but there were occasions where I'd pause to look up the meaning of a word, since it came from a language I don't know. I thought it was well-done, as there are plenty of context clues, and you can certainly figure out what is being said even if you don't know the exact meaning of the word. But it is more present in this book than in other ones, as a heads up.

I continue to enjoy this series very much, and am grateful that Older keeps returning to these characters and this world. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC; all views are my own.

A recipe for an extremely cozy reading evening: a new Mossa and Pleiti book! Very much in keeping with the first two novellas, it's an investigation set on the Giant, a Jupiter of the future that has become home to people who made Earth uninhabitable, and now hosts life on iron platforms suspended over a gaseous planet, linked by orbital railways. I'm very pleased to come back to what I've always loved about these books: descriptions of endless cups of tea with delicious food had while huddling from the Jovian storms, a gleeful deployment of loanwords from all kinds of languages as a reflection of the mixing of cultures (I had a whole little monologue to my partner about whether I would use mingbaied the same way as Malka Older did, if I was constructing a futuristic slang), distressingly authentic depiction of drama and tensions in academia as a fuel and backdrop for most cases Mossa and Pleiti end up tangled in. The third installment also continues to challenge some of Pleiti's complacent assumptions (I do hope that Modernist ethnographer comes back!) as it fleshes the societal fractions and biases on the Giant. I did not expect a very literal hook to the originating Sherlockian lore with this one: obviously played with more sensitivity, but until it was spelled out, I hadn' realized that the tension-driver on the romantic side of things would be depression. And then another, even more cheeky nod to the SH canon at the end: I somehow keep forgetting these books are homages, because the worldbuilding is my favourite aspect of them, but yeah, they are. Unlike the second story, in this one Pleiti spends the first half investigating alone, and agonizing over Mossa, which sort of took away from the enjoyment a little - I like them most when they play off each other - so I am looking forward to future instalments bringing them back together more.

Does stand alone. Nice story. Interesting characters. Kept me guessing right up to the end. Good set up for next book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

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, I continue to enjoy the series overall. The story was interesting, I enjoyed the new characters and expansion of the world, and it definitely had higher stakes than some of the previous stories. The premise, world building, and commentary on how we treat our planet continues to be fantastic.

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 have been a big fan of this series. While I did enjoy this addition, I felt like Pleiti was portrayed a little pathetic. She was so over the top yearning for Mossa it was difficult to read. Also, the reveal of the villain was, by the admission of the book itself, sudden and illogical.

The third book in Malka Older’s Mossa and Pleiti series, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses sticks to the basic formula: an intro where Mossa appears (which gives us something of her situation and thoughts), followed by narration by Pleiti of the main plot.

For a good chunk of this one, Mossa and Pleiti are apart, and feeling more mismatched from each other in the previous book, due to a fit of depression on Mossa’s part. Given that the chemistry between them is part of what I’m attracted to in these books (not just in relationship terms, but as two people playing off each other), it’s not surprising that things picked up in pace once Mossa arrived in the story, though she and Pleiti continue to be out of step with each other. It feels like there’s a reckoning still to come there — or a constant, ever-shifting dance of adaptation and compromise, which might in the end be more realistic.

One thing I noticed a lot in this installment was the use of language. There were a lot of borrowed words I didn’t immediately know the meaning of, which I don’t remember happening in the previous two books. Mostly it’s clear by context (or similarity to an English word), but once or twice I was stymied enough to try to look up a translation, which I definitely didn’t have to do with the previous books. I wonder if I was just flowing with it better, in the past? But it definitely struck me very strongly this time.

My overall impression was that this book was a bit longer than the other two, and the pace didn’t quite work for me — but that should be taken with a pinch of salt since I still read it in half a day, in just four reading sessions! It might not be my favourite of the series, but I enjoyed it.

This is the fourth in the Mossa and Pleiti series by Malka Older, and it is a worthy sequel -- we learn more about Pleiti's past and more about the world of the platforms. There's also a mystery, though hanging out with these great characters on this wonderful world is enough for me.