★★★★☆ Nestle in a bit deeper

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

Malka Older

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the second (and last, as of 26-May-2024) novella in Malka Older's Mossa and Pleiti series of science fiction mysteries. This one felt a bit more conventional but also a bit more intimate than the first, The Mimicking of Known Successes. The overall structure is similar --we begin with a prolog from Mossa's point of view. Perhaps the most important thing we learn in the prolog is that, when she is alone, Mossa thinks of Pleiti. (In this prolog Mossa uses feminine pronouns in her thoughts of Pleiti -- this is, I believe, the only place in the two novellas in which Pleiti's gender is unambiguously revealed. So yes, it is indeed a Sapphic romance, as the advertising claims. But no, they are not really at all like Holmes and Watson.) The prolog is followed by thirty-one chapters told from Pleiti's first-person point of view.

What Mossa is thinking about in the prolog is a missing persons case in Valdegeld, and whether she can use it as an excuse to visit Pleiti. Of course she does, and of course she involves Pleiti in her investigation.

I enjoyed this one. It was a more conventional science fiction mystery, in the sense that the mystery is in part a mystery about the nature of the science fictional reality. Because of this, we learn a bit more about the history of the settlement on Giant (= Jupiter) and also on the volcanic moon Io. The nature of the geosynchronous steel rings that literally support the colony on Giant becomes ever-so-slightly more clear. (But I STILL want a MAP!) And Mossa and Pleiti's relationship becomes a little deeper and more intimate.

All-in-all, it feels to me as if Older is taking an incremental approach to world-building. She's never going to explain everything, but with each novella a couple more layers are peeled back and we understand a bit more deeply. It was fun. I enjoyed it.

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