The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

“I wanted to go home, where I felt safe. It occurred to me, as we continued our journey in silence, that when the first refugees from Earth had arrived on Giant—and, for that matter, on Io—they must have felt much the same.”

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

September 8, 2025 by faintingviolet Leave a Comment

When I finished The Mimicking of Known Successes a couple weeks ago I knew I wasn’t in love with that book, but that I wanted to continue reading the series to see how Malka Older built out her world and dug into her sapphic Watson & Holmes stand-ins because I had become quite attached to Mossa and Pleiti. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles begins the same way as its predecessor in that we get a prologue from Mossa’s point of view and then the rest […]

“Come along, Pleiti, you can practice ethnography later. We have a murder to solve.”

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

January 15, 2024 by Emmalita Leave a Comment

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 […]

Help Our Mission