(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)
It’s such a delight to come across a sci-fi tale that completely delights and engrosses you with its originality, thoughtfulness, wit & verve and rich characterisation, that when you do stumble across it, it feels like all your reading Christmases have come at once.
Such was the case when a stray Bluesky post singing the praises of Malka Older’s Mossa and Pleiti series popped up in my feed, the gorgeously and colourfully playful covers catching my attention at once – yes, I know the old adage about books and covers but wholly happy to judge away because the books are every bit as good as the covers that announce them to the world, nay the galaxy – followed swiftly by a premise that promised some sort of sapphic Agatha Christie in post-apolcayptic space jaunt.
The first entry in the just-birthed trilogy, The Mimicking of Known Successes (Mossa & Pleiti book #1) by Malka Older, was like coming home in lots of ways.
In no time flat, Older did some brilliantly expansive and instantly understandable world-building, established who Mossa and Pleiti are, both individually and to each other, and sent us barrelling on a grand crime-solving adventure across Giant aka Jupiter to which humanity fled some centuries before when Earth finally became toxically unlivable.
For such a slim volume, the first book of the series accomplished an awful lot, and the good news is that the second volume, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, is very bit as good.
I looked again at the bare platform, empty of amenities, sparse of society, precarious in every way, and wondered again at our human tendency to romanticize [sic] the imposition of unnecessary obstacles into our lives.
Qurkiy clever titles aside, which just add to the joy of this wholly original series which takes well-worn tropes and give them a vivaciously entertaining new sheen, what makes the series work, and which is exemplified in The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, is how well Older creates a sense of time and place, both for the setting of the storytelling but for the characters themselves.
You feel from the get-go that you are in a place that exists, that is as real and as posisble as anything in a reader’s current lived experience.
That might seem like a standard part of just plain old good writing but not everyone manages it like Older does, investing the human civilisation that’s been built around Giant with a veracity that feels palpable and as if you could just arrive on one of the floating platforms that sit above the gas clouds and feel completely at home.
It all feels so real that when Mossa, who’s a highly respected, credentialled Investigator – what passes for an investigative police force on humanity’s new home which also extends to moons such as Io (the inhabitants of whom are scorned as lesser than by Giant’s populace for reasons that make for fascinatingly thoughtful reading) and Pleiti, an academic at Valdegeld University who specialises in working to restore Earth’s lost ecosystems by studying literatur, walk around and catch railcars and eat and sleep, it all feels like it makes sense.
That’s not always a given in sci-fi novels, no matter how imaginative they might be, but here it is in full force and vibrantly and convincingly realised.
This time around the investigation which brings Mossa to Valdegeld – she comes often as she and Pleiti have resumed the relationship that defined their years of study at the same uni but Pleiti still isn’t sure how invested the more emotionally reserved Mossa is in their nascent renewed coupling – is about missing persons, a good number of them in fact.
Mossa needs Pleiti’s insight to help crack the case which, as these of mysteries will do, ends up being a good deal more different at investigation’s end than it was at the start.
Much of what drives the mystery itself, and indeed the overall momentum of The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (and really the whole series) is the way it lays bare what drives people to do what they do.
Whether we are exploring what drove humanity to flee to the stars, and how it happened which was not quite as democratic or needs based as it should have been, or we are simply living out a normal day for Pleiti and Mossa – although “normal” is a rubbery concept in any investigation – The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles gives us a fascinating insight into how people, no matter when or where they live, always fall back on some rather self-sabotaging mechanisms.
If poisoning Earth should’ve taught us anything, it’s that self interest never leads to long-term sustainable, pan-human beneficial outcomes, but while most people have heeded the lesson, some have not and struggles for power and selfish self-determination cna still prevail, even if it’s not in our overall best interest.
I raised my eyebrows, but decided not to take the bait. I would work out the reason for her cavalier attitude towards navigation later, silently, preferably while Mossa was asleep and with the railcar timetable to hand. ‘East,’ I said decisively. Mossa nodded approvingly, turned the crank to engage the correct curve, and we glided off.
That certainly frustrates Pleiti in particular who, devoted as she is to recreating the lost biospheres of Earth for everyone’s benefit, finds it galling when people act simply to advance their own concerns.
She is a woman who believes in the collective future of the human race, and much of what sustains The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is this idea, not aggressively or polemically pushed, that acting simply for yourself or for your small group won’t ever last beyond your lifetime, save for the damage you might do to the collective good which can well and truly outlast you.
Poor Pleiti, who works involves living in literature and other written texts to see how they describe the natural world and how this might be extrapolated into recreating despoiled environments, is also frustrated by Mossa’s emotionally glib response to things, although happily she shows increasing signs of appreciating who Pleiti is and why she matters so much to her.
But the fact remains that whether we’re solving a mystery or plumbing the depths of the human condition, or simply seeing what makes Mossa and Pleiti tick in the brave new world of Giant, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a thrillingly good novella which contains multitudes of great characters, clever narratives and thoughtful insights and which delights at each and every turn, its steampunk heart meeting the human soul and making some damn fine writing in which to happily lose yourself.