Every time I pick up a Malka Older book, I am struck anew by how beautifully she writes. As much as I enjoy the melding of mystery, romance, and science fiction in her Mossa and Pleiti series, the way she uses words is such a joy to read.
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses is the third in the series, and you must read the first two books in order to understand this one. The Rector’s actions in The Mimicking of Known Successes continues to reverberate. Mossa and Pleiti hit a challenge in their relationship at the beginning of the book, which illuminates another aspect of ungovernable impulses, that ties back to why their college relationship failed.
I love the way that Older draws on The Hound of the Baskervilles plot to explore mental illness. Mossa is deep in a Jovian melancholy and doesn’t want to hear about the case that Pleiti’s friend, Pentaj, has brought to her. So Pleiti goes on her own to the far off university campus. Pleiti doubts her investigative abilities, but she’s willing to try to help a Pentaj’s cousin who is the victim of a smear campaign and possibly under threat of physical harm. I live with chronic depression, as do many of the people I love, and the experience that Mossa and Pleiti go through was so relatable to me.
As with the other books in the series, academic rivalries and politics are the medium that allows Older to explore how humans cope with their own alienation. Older is building such an interesting world. The language, food, and the odd obsessions we gather around make the Jovian settlement feel lived in, both precariously new and shockingly hidebound. I can’t wait to read more of it.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Tor Books and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.