This is the third novella in The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti series by Malka Older. This series is such a great science fiction story taking place on Jupiter after with queer characters that you root for. The science aspect of this space adventure is not always explained, but the focus is definitely on the characters and the rich new society that Older has crafted for this world. I like that even if you don't speak the many languages the characters casually dish out (like international slang) you definitely know what they mean from the dialogue and scene context. The investigative duo, Mossa and Pleiti, are engaging and their point of views make them feel like distinctly different and real people. I love their interactions and the way the duo problem solves together as they embark on this book's mystery.

There are clues scattered throughout the book leading up to the reveal at the end. Depression is a huge aspect of this book, but make no mistake the romantic relationship between Mossa and Pleiti strengthens. Although there is danger this could still be considered a cozy mystery with how much we spend within the book focused on just the characters. I highly recommend this book and the entire series for character-focused readers.

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for the copy of this book to review.

This was a fantastic continuation in the series. I enjoyed the change up of the book being from Pleiti's perspective instead of Mossa's. I think it made it fresh and seeing another University/platform in the world make me more excited for any potential future books in the series, as the world continues to expand, but also doesn't lose track of the plot lines from previous books.

While I love the world building in this series, this installment did not grab me. The fact that Mossa didn't show up until halfway through the story, and that the drama of their relationship played such a large part did not make it as gripping a read for me. Also, the mixing of languages and use of unfamiliar (made up?) words was a stumbling block for me. I was way too aware of that and it messed with the flow of the novel for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This is the third installment in her Mossa and Pleiti mystery series (the others are The Mimicking of Known Successes and The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles), and I was so glad to find out that a fourth and fifth are planned. I prefer to describe these books as comforting, as the author does, rather than c_zy, that annoying term that has become such a marketing favorite recently. But that’s not why I read them. Each one is a well-crafted mystery set against an amazing background of human settlement of Jupiter and perfectly entwined with a complicated relationship of the two major characters.

Each novel reveals a bit more of the strange life of humans dwelling in cities built on platforms atop geosynchronous rings around a gas giant. However improbable it seems, people have adapted well after a couple of centuries to living under atmoshields that provide basically breathable air, though everyone needs a further dose of oxygen through their personal atmoscarves. Pleiti is a professor of Classical studies (the effort to rediscover details of life on a scorched Earth in hopes of one day resettling that planet) while Mossa is an Investigator who looks into cases of missing people and criminal activity. Pleiti lives in her comfortable suite of rooms at the Valdegeld university where she sometimes has to deal with peers in the Modern faculty (devoted to studying conditions on Giant, the name Older has given to Jupiter, and its moons). Mossa and Pleiti were lovers in college, later grew apart, but gradually came back together in the context of Mossa’s investigations in the first two books of the series.

So it is a shock to find Mossa in the Prologue to The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses lurking outside Pleiti’s rooms but unable to bring herself to knock on the door. That scene is followed in Chapter One by Pleiti wondering if Mossa’s declining all her invitations was beginning to add up to a problem. When she hears a knock on the door she opens, expecting Mossa, only to find someone she cannot quite place – Petanj, an old school mate who wants Pleiti to come to a distant university where her cousin, Villette, is up for a donship but has been getting serious threats. When Pleiti goes to Mossa’s apartment to seek her help, she is stunned by her lover’s refusal to even hear about the case or to have anything to do with her. So it is up to Pleiti to take on the role of investigator, though she feels not at all up to the job. She joins Petanj on a days’ long train ride to Stortellen and its university where Villette has been doing her research on the artificial atmosphere. During that journey, she realizes that Mossa must be suffering a severe bout of depression and berates herself for not trying harder to help her friend. For much of her trip and investigation, Pleiti will beat up on herself and have to fight off the yearning to return to Mossa’s side.

But Pleiti continues and is thrust immediately on arriving in Stortellen into a dinner party with a large group of Villette’s friends. Here we meet many of the possible suspects, each a well drawn character. Villette herself is a completely likable person so completely immersed in her research and optimistic about the world that she cannot imagine why anyone she knows would harbor deep animosity. Her research on atmospherics has led to her invention of a nose filter that makes atmoscarves unnecessary, and she wants to give away this new technology for the public good. Naively, she cannot imagine why anyone would object, yet there are many possibilities. The University could lose by not being able to profit from the license, the firms that sell atmoscarves could go out of business, and several colleagues could easily envy her expected early promotion to a donship. To Villette’s consternation, the threats keep coming and escalate from written forms to physical attacks.

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The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, and the series as a whole, has just about everything I look for in a novel. The writing pulls me in as it weaves together a good mystery, interesting scifi elements about life around a gas giant, good characters and the ongoing complications of the relationship between Mossa and Pleiti. It’s a wonderful diversion from the true doomscrolling of the day’s latest intolerable news but one that keeps you in touch with the realities of human emotion.

As ever, Older delivers a modern take on a Holmesian mystery, updated with all the sci fi trappings we've come to love and the academia politics we can't resist. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Unfortunately, I just could not get into this book. The setting and the lingo were just not it for me. I tried really hard to get into it and to care but I just couldn’t. I don’t care about the characters at all nor the storyline to be completely honest.

The third of Malka Older's mysteries on the platforms that surround the gas giant Jupiter is a delightful mix of Victorian mystery, with Holmes and Watson vibes, post-apocalyptic science fiction and sapphic romance. Pleti and Mossa make a terrific team in love and life, with believable feelings and just unbelievable enough events. This story also delves into the emotional cost of trolls and stalkers, microagressions and the classist and ableist underpinnings of academic research.

A fantastic read, a great mystery and a unique love story.

This was my favorite of the series, I think! I enjoyed the plot, but more than that, I felt like the characters were absolutely my favorite! I feel like we really got to know Pleiti so much in this story, and even Mossa (or at least, some of her struggles). That, and the side characters were the most enjoyable in this installment as well, and I do hope we continue to see some of them going forward in the series. I will say, I am so glad I read this on my Kindle! I have a pretty extensive vocabulary, but between Pleiti's next-level vocabulary, and the fact that many of the words in this world are from a variety of languages, it was so much easier to look up on my Kindle (yay technology), so I would think this would be a little more frustrating in a physical or audiobook. Overall, I highly recommend this series, especially this installment, and cannot wait for whatever comes next for Pleiti and Mossa!

Sometimes you just have to give into the fact that a particular book, series, or author just isn’t for you. Sadly, I think I’ve reached that point after reading The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, the third book in Malka Older’s THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MOSSA AND PLEITI.

Though I’ve never really fallen hard for any of the first three works, I say “sadly” because I love the premise behind them. Or I should say, several of the premises. The first is the setting, a future where humanity was forced to abandon Earth thanks to our own deprivations and now, in greatly depleted numbers, lives on orbital platforms around Jupiter. Another is how the stories are a clear homage to and play with the Sherlock Holmes stories, with characters to stand in for each (Mossa as Holmes and Pleiti as Watson), clever allusions, and a usage of the source material that goes beyond plug and play. And finally, I enjoy (well, mostly, but more on that later) how Pleiti is a university scholar and how academia plays a major role in the stories.

But while I love the premises, I’ve been less enamored of the execution for various reasons, such as the mystery elements being generally weak or the characters occasional grating. In my review of book two, I noted my issues but said I’d still pick up book three in hopes of some improvement in the areas I had problems with. Unfortunately, the third book was my least favorite, and I considered giving up on it multiple times. Honestly, were it not a novella and a review book, I would have.

My major issues were the same as with the prior books, but to a greater degree. The mystery here just was not particularly engaging. The stakes were not that high, the villain’s acts felt repetitive and often implausible, the investigation was desultory and sporadic, the villain melodramatic, and the solving of the whodunnit left no room for the reader and felt anticlimactic. The secondary characters were flat and mostly indistinguishable, sometimes implausible, and for all their alleged intelligence many of them felt more like 13-year-olds. And while I know part of this is an intended critique of academics and academic institutions (from an academic), it felt over the top (and I say that as one who has seen the uglier sides of academia). As for the main characters, I confess that I grew extremely weary of Plieti’s first-person voice obsessing over Mossa very early And Mossa— by absence, personality, and context (a bout of depression) — was a non-entity. I know I was supposed to care about their relationship and about Mossa’s mental health, but didn’t.

The world remains interesting, but there was too little of it here to make up for the above. And I like how Older throws in a slew of unfamiliar words from different language groups and an evolved language. There seems a lot more of that here if I recall correctly, and sometimes I wondered if there was too much of that (both due to the interruptive factor and because it sometimes felt awkward or forced), and I think this will probably evoke a highly polarized reader response.

Obviously, my personal response was overall negative, enough that I’ll be stopping the series here. That said, these books have garnered a number of awards, they are clearly highly popular. Given their brevity, I’d still recommend giving the first one a shot given that I seem to be the outlier here. If you don’t like the book, I’d suggest not continuing in hopes that will change. And if you do like it, then keep going and enjoy!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for letting me read an e-ARC of The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older! I’ve rated this book 3.5 out of 5 stars, but have rounded it up to 4 out of 5 stars for this review.

Let me start by saying that I love this cozy, sci-fic, mystery novella series. Our two main characters, Pleiti and Mossa, reek of queer Watson and Sherlock inspiration and I am SO here for it. That being said, this particular installment fell a little short for me. I know the stories operate from Pleiti’s POV, but I always look forward to watching Mossa work and operate from Pleiti’s perspective. It’s no spoiler to mention that Mossa is not present for over half of this story and that, for me, really made the story drag. I didn’t love constantly listening to Pleiti pout over Mossa’s absence during an active investigation. Each scene, though masterfully strung together, seemed to take eons even though they were extremely short chapters in a 250 page novella. I wasn’t particularly taken by the new characters introduced, Petanj and Villette, so they didn’t help pique my interest in unfolding the mystery of this story. I found myself more interested in the technologies in development at Stortellen by Villette than the actual characters themselves. When Mossa does finally make her appearance and helps Pleiti unravel the mystery at hand, things really picked up pace for me. It was a satisfying, though slightly nail-biting, ending as this series has accomplished every book thus far.

The aforementioned complaints aside, this is still a fantastic read! I think the mystery was well-crafted and the characterization choices make sense given the previous two books’ plots. As always, Older is a wonderful writer who uses absolutely gorgeous language (and who challenged my knowledge of the English language; I had sought out a dictionary more than once) and has managed to combine multiple languages to invent or repurpose slang throughout this series.

Despite this not being my favorite installment, I will continue to read this series and I look forward to the next book whenever that comes out!

The first Mossa and Pleiti book was a murder mystery, the second a missing person case, and this one now a threat of violence and academic sabotage. This one had a bit of a different vibe from the first two books, as Mossa is absent for a good portion of the book, and Pleiti is taking the lead on the investigation on her own. We still get all the comfort of the first two books, with the warmth and coziness of the food and living spaces being a focus. The Holmes and Watson vibe came through really strongly in this book, more strongly than in the last two in my opinion.

The mystery came together pretty well, but I did find that there were maybe too many new characters introduced and I had a tough time keeping track of them. I did like the evolution of Mossa and Pleiti's relationship and how they both showed character growth against the background of the main plot.

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**TL;DR**: Maybe the strongest in this series so far!
**Source**: NetGalley , Thank you so much to the publisher!

**Plot**: Pleiti heads out on job on her own, and we see a fantastic challenge to an old Sherlockian trope.
**Characters**: I loved the cast on this one, there was a great cast here and we see a lot of development with our primary characters
**Setting:** As always I love this Jupiter settlement the ladies live on and in this one we see a different college and town!
**Mystery:** I solved this one but I didn’t expect it to go quite as hard as it did.

**Thoughts:**

This series just works for me, but I know it’s not going to work for everyone. It’s a bit dense, it’s a reworking of Sherlock Holmes story types and tropes, and it’s somewhat dark in places. But for me it’s on point. This third volume might be my favorite in the series so far. It’s the biggest volume and after the second one it’s the most interesting.

Mossa ends up taking a case on her own due to Pleiti’s fit of depression and apathy (something classic to Holmes). This makes for a fascinating discussion later on the series as the two are in a romantic relationship as much as a platonic relationship. Watching Mossa work on her own was very interesting as she has been learning the skills of investigating from Pleiti. Now, I’m not saying Pleiti is a bit of a damp napkin but this solitary investigation really suited Mossa here. We saw a lot more of the culture and language of the world, a new college environment and some very great growth in her character.

Pleiti does show up, and as I noted a good conversation is had about her apathy and depressive fit. I appreciated this a lot. As a trop we often see it repeated in Holmesian inspired work but rarely do we see it challenged or addressed. Additionally the mystery itself was darker and even with Pleiti there, had quite a bit of tension and suspense to it.

Overall a fantastic new entry in this series and one I really recommend continuing on to.

When a former classmate calls on scholar Pleiti to help with an investigation on a distant platform at another university, Pleiti thinks it may be the thing to help reignite Mossa's interest in her. After what Pleiti thought had been a fairly successful romantic association, Mossa has drifted recently, and Pleiti can't help but wonder if she's at fault.) Mossa grumpily declines, and Pleiti travels to investigate the charges of academic dishonesty against a young scholar up for a prestigious promotion... and ends up in the center of conspiracy, distrust, and longing for Mossa's professional investigatory skills.

I loved this installment of the Mossa and Pleiti series. While the mystery is largely self-contained, you do need to read this series in order to get the best sense of the worldbuilding (and how they can live on Jupiter) and Pleiti's academic background which drives her perspective. Potency gives us honest character development balanced against a mystery high in stakes to those involved.

@yourbookishbff and I both realized an increased use of loanwords from a number of languages that neither of us remember playing as strong a role in the first two books. It feels intentional on Older's part, to start to see a broader cultural background as our POV character Pleiti starts to look outside of her classicist academic shell and sees more perspectives in the world around her.

I love a good novella series, and this sapphic mystery series set on Jupiter hits the spot every time.

The third installment in The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses is yet another cozy mystery shrouded in Older’s amazing character work. This addition to the series sees Pleiti heading the investigation in Mossa’s stead, sorting out what on the surface seems to be a matter of academic rivalry and jealousy. Alone and on a platform hostile to her, Pleiti must grapple both with Mossa’s absence and the mystery that seems to increase with danger at every second.

By this point in the series, both Mossa and Pleiti feel like old friends, and this book is no exception. Older is a master at weaving personal struggle into the broader mystery of each book, and Pleiti’s separation from Mossa this book truly gives her a time to shine. The mystery is delightfully twisty and confounding, at least if you’re not well versed in mysteries as I am. All in all, a wonderful read, and I look forward to the next adventure our intrepid Jovian and Ionian get up to.

Dare I hope with an untitled book 4 and 5 in Goodreads that there will be more? Cozy mysteries are my second favorite genre, a distant second I admit but still…. And I can’t resist a fantasy or science fiction title with a mystery plot. The setting is a bit of a science fantasy, It would take a lot of technical miracles to make a colony of floating platforms habitable around a planet without a breathable atmosphere but hey, let’s roll with it. It’s about the characters and their society anyway and those are full fleshed out and entertaining. They’re fun reads! And not too long if you aren’t a fan of doorstop books.

This series continues to be a comfort read series for me, and though I didn't enjoy this entry quite as much as the first two, it's still enjoyable and lovely to be in this world with Mossa and Pleiti.

In this third novel, we follow along with Pleiti as she helps an old school friend with a mystery at a different university where they are being targeted by an unknown person who hates them for unknown reasons. Why not Mossa AND Pleiti? Well...we get an idea of why they fell out the first time they were together in school, and we get to see them try to figure out why and how they've hurt each other and do their best to work through it.

The mystery itself is pretty solid, but this book feels more like it's about Pleiti and her inner workings versus the mystery itself. The big reveal felt underwhelming, but that played second place to Mossa and Pleiti figuring their shit out.

One thing I do have to say and I've seen it mentioned in both positive and negative lights in other reviews, is that there is a lot of use of "slang" terms that have been adapted and evolved for this future time. I don't recall these terms being used so heavily in the first two books the way they are in this one. While I don't mind it, I do wish we'd had more of it in the first two books so that it didn't feel as jarring in this one.

The little wink at the Holmes canon at the end of this book was lovely.

Again, while I personally like this the least of all three books so far, that's like saying books 1 and 2 were 4.5/5 stars and book 3 is <i>only</i> 4 stars. They're still fantastic reads set in a world that I love being in.

I have been waiting for the further adventures of Pleiti and Mossa for over a year, and this book was everything I wanted, and more; from the first page, I was once again entirely immersed in the lives and world of my favorite investigator and academic.

In case this is your introduction to the series: the stories are set in Giant (Jupiter), where Humanity fled to a few hundred years ago, after polluting Earth past the point it could sustain life. Given the planetary conditions, technology is very much Victorian steampunk-flavored: trains running from settlement to settlement through the night, fog-blanketed cities, telegrams, letters, and people physically running errands and carrying messages here and there.

And while the trappings of the world may sound somewhat unfamiliar, the institutions of higher learning? Ah, those are timeless indeed--because, wherever you take Humanity, you take all of humanity with you.

This is another series where I can feel myself letting go of the world as soon as I start reading--and in fact, once I started the book, didn't look up until I was done--and then struggled for days to write a coherent review.

The bulk of the novel is narrated in first person, past tense, by Pleiti, as she navigates both the uncertainty of her relationship with Mossa, and an unfamiliar environment as she seeks to help a friend; however, here once again there's a brief prologue in third person, past tense, from Mossa's rather cryptic point of view.

This book picks up fairly soon after the events in The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, which in turn took place not long after The Mimicking of Known Successes; while the main story in each installment is self-contained, Pleiti is still struggling to come to terms with all she learned--about her world, academia, and herself--at the end of that first adventure. It does not help her to realize that, despite everything they have been through together, her relationship with Mossa isn't necessarily as firmly established as she would like it to be.

The worldbuilding in this series is exquisite; the author has clearly spent a lot of time pondering the logistics of building a global society on a gas planet and a couple of its moons, but the beauty of the writing is that any exposition is seamlessly woven into Pleiti's thought processes as she interacts with other characters, and ponders the intersections of history, sociology, and even psychology, both in regards with the case at hand, her own research, and as she muses on the questions raised by Mossa's sudden--and to her, inexplicable--detachment.

Then there are the politics of academia, with all their petty resentments, archaic protocols and unwritten rules--not to mention institutional rivalry--as well as the inherent tensions and unholy alliances of research and capitalism. (There is a Jonas Salk shout out: "What did you think I was going to do, sell it? ... I'm not going to deprive anyone of that")

Then, there's the language.

I love how Dr Older uses language in this world. Every so often, words in Spanish, French, Dutch, or any of a number of languages spanning Earth, are dropped into the English narrative, in a way that makes them part of the common parlance of Giant, just as the food and fog are. Interestingly, while they're declined or conjugated according to the rules of English grammar, these terms retain their cultural implications, which makes for a much richer worldbuilding that is seems at first glance.

And the food, oh goodness me! And look, I generally don't care for food in novels (I eat to survive, mostly), but when dishes from my childhood pop up this way, I end up hungry for some tlayudas del comal, and curious about all the other delicacies on offer.

But what truly makes these stories resonate is the relationship between Mossa and Pleiti; there's so much pining, the cutting pain of misunderstanding someone despite having known them for so long, and loving them so deeply.

Not only is Pleity uneasy about taking the lead in investigating the seemingly disconnected--and malicious--shenanigans directed at her friend Villette, but Mossa's absence cuts deep, and causes her a lot of anguish.

"Or perhaps it was nothing, and that was enough, because it didn't always require something happening to fall out of love." (Pleiti, chapter 2; emphasis on the page)

The solution to the case, in fact, hinges almost exclusively on people's feelings about each other: love, envy, resentment, ownership, fear; the clues are for the most part quite subtle, and I'm not sure I would call this a fair play mystery myself (although that may be entirely a 'me' problem--I did mention I inhaled this book, right? so I may have missed something).

I enjoyed the drama of the climax, and the hopefulness of its aftermath--and I am ecstatic to say that Dr Older is writing the next book in the series right now.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses gets a 9.00 out of 10

This is the third in a sci-fi mystery/Sapphic romance series, set on Giant, the Jovian planet now occupied by the descendants of the ruined planet of Earth. I had not read the two previous books, but for the most part it did not present a problem.

The story begins when Valdegeld University Scholar Pleiti is approached by Petanj, a friend from her undergraduate days, to help her and her cousin Villette. Villette, a scholar at the rival college of Stortellen, is up for a donship because of her groundbreaking research on a small device to help breathe in their inhospitable environment without having to wear an atmoscarf. Someone has been anonymously slandering Villette, accusing her of plagiarism, and possibly posing a physical threat to her. Pleiti now has a reputation as an investigator because of her work with Mossa, an official Investigator who let Pleiti, her lover, help her in the past. Petanj hoped Pleiti would come to Stortellen with her and help find out what was going on.

Pleiti agreed, in part because for some reason Mossa was not communicating with her. So she made the two-day trip to Stortellen - “about as far away as it was possible to get on the network of geo-synchronized rings and platforms that formed humanity’s habitat on Giant.”

Soon after Pleiti arrived, the threats to Villette intensified. Pleiti sent missives to Mossa about the case hoping she would come help; Villette and possibly even Pleiti were in mortal danger.

This is a standard mystery on one level, but the scifi world-building makes it marvelously fun.

First there is the amusing fact of the sci-fi twist to a “closed-door” mystery. (This is one in which the possibility of suspects is limited by physical circumstances.). In this case, it almost has to be someone on the Stortellen platform rather than, say, from other outposts in and around Giant.

Second, the typical rivalries among academics is given the sci-fi treatment with an underlying plot strand about the division in academics between “Classicists” (who study old Earth in the hope of one day returning there) and “Modernists” who focus on life on Giant. There is an interesting antagonism between the two approaches, with Classicists considering Modernists lightweight - “studying what was right there in front of us . . . could hardly be the same as teasing out numbers and relationships from sources writing about an obsolete world…. while Modernists reviled Classicists for wanting to cosplay Earth.

Third, one must give plaudits to Older’s integration into the story of the evolution of language and culture that would have certainly taken place on a new world comprised of an amalgam of people. She never defines new words, but their meanings are clear. As an example: “Villette got off to the lab early, of course, sarariman that she is.” Then there is Pleiti asking “Dafuq?” in a context making clear this would mean, to us, “What the fuck?” Sometimes rather than neologisms, Older throws in words from other languages: “Villette gestured around at the walls and the floor, apparently too verklempt to speak.” And sometimes the words are the same, but the meaning has evolved. For example, because humans destroyed the planet of Earth, calling someone a “human” is to insult that person.

And the story is even amusing about her choice of all the things that stay the same: the sports contests between universities, the pressures on scholars to publish, the social gatherings that highlight fashion and food, and most of all: the awkwardness of relationships, especially being afraid to say how you really feel.

Mystery aficionados may notice similarities (a homage perhaps?) to the novel “Gaudy Night” by Dorothy Sayers (1935). Like that novel, in this book we have a college setting, “poison-pen” messages accompanied by graffiti, vandalism, and personal threats, and a mystery writer (Harriet Vane, whose character in some ways echoes that of Pleiti) calling in an investigator (Lord Peter Wimsey) for help with whom she has a complicated personal relationship.

Evaluation: While the story wasn’t earth-shaking (so to speak) it was very clever and entertaining, and I look forward to reading any new books in the series.

- Hooray, a new Mossa and Pleiti story! If you aren’t reading this series, you are missing out. Cozy mysteries set at universities on Jupiter solved by a sapphic pair, what’s not to love?
- Mossa and Pleiti are separate for much of this book, leaving Pleiti to try to do the sleuthing herself. That, along with a trip to a different platform, made this installment feel like a major expansion of the world.
- I can’t discuss plot too much without giving things away, so I’ll just say please pick up this series so we can get many more of them!

Mossa and Pleiti series has been a very enjoyable one till now, so I was quite interested in this third installment as well, and turns out this is the best of the three.

The author does a stunning job both plot and character wise in this book. We get a sinister plot trying to discredit and maybe even harm a Modernist scholar, both physically and through her research; and Pleiti taking up the investigation herself in the absence of Mossa. On the other hand, we get a much more detailed look at their dynamic - their feelings for each other, but how they are eclipsed at times by their own insecurities, but still feeling it hard to be away from each other. There were some great conversations between them in the second half of the book, and I always appreciate good communication between a couple, even if doesn’t solve everything instantly. The plot starts off slow, with Pleiti unsure of her sleuthing skills, but her unique scholarly methods of deductions lead to some very explosive and unexpected revelations. It was also very nice to see her get reacquainted with some old college friends, with the possibility that we might meet them again if there are more books in the series(which I sincerely hope there are).

The prose is also so beautiful and hit me particularly at times, with some curious turn of phrase or just the emotion that the author is able to evoke. There is also more world building in this book - we get to see the dynamics in another big university, the rivalries between Unis as well as between the scholars (and how human and earthly it all feels even in a very futuristic setting); and we also get to observe the petty prejudices and discriminations that exist even in this society which supposedly started afresh, after humans had to leave earth. This part of the book made it feel all the more realistic and grounded, despite being set on a gas giant.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The audiobook is also narrated very well and kept me hooked. I have to say that the Holmes and Watson vibes haven’t always been too obvious in this series before, but this book is clearly an ode to The Hound of Baskervilles and considering that it’s one of my all time favorites, I’m not surprised I fell in love with this one too.