The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the sequel to Malka Older's "The Mimicking of Known Successes", her really well done F/F Romantic Science Fiction take on the Sherlock Holmes/Watson story (which also dealt heavily with science and environmental concerns). As you might tell from the prior sentence, that first book was really deep for a novella, covering a lot of themes and ideas (and set in a future where with Earth devastated, humans have settled largely on platforms around Jupiter), but at its heart was the relationship between neurodivergent investigator Mossa and "Classics" scholar Pleiti. And that relationship was really lovely, as the two exes got back together over the course of Mossa's investigation and Pleiti (from whose perspective nearly all of the story is shown) finds herself entranced and drawn to this woman in Mossa who struggles with human interaction and expressing romantic interest but is oh so brilliant at her job. It was really lovely, and the questions of environmental/scientific ethics in this post-devastation-of-Earth future were really interesting, so the fact that the mystery wasn't really one where the reader could guess the answer really didn't matter - I liked it a lot.
In that sense, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is similar to its predecessor: the heart of the story is still Mossa/Pleiti, this time with the focus being on Pleiti trying to realize how much Mossa actually cares for her given Mossa's difficulty expressing that fact and how much about Mossa and Mossa's thoughts that Pleiti doesn't actually know. The mystery this time is honestly even weaker than that of the last book, but it serves well enough to keep the plot and relationships rolling, as we deal with both the fallout from the last book as well as new ideas about how humans will try to break away from constriction and sometime-oppression to try and thrive on their own, even when that is incredibly implausible. In short, as I'll explain below, it's a pretty well done sequel and I can't wait for the next installment.
Plot Summary:
When Mossa arrives at Pleiti's quarters at Valdegard, Pleiti is thrilled to get more time to spend with her. But of course Mossa comes to Valdegard with a case - the case of a missing student who...upon investigation...turns out to be one of 17 missing people over the past year, an extraordinarily high number. Mossa asks Pleiti - in Mossa's capacity as investigator and perhaps...as something more than that to Pleiti - for help, and the two of them thus begin to investigate what happened to the student and so many others and where could they have gone? And was there foul play involved? But for Pleiti, this investigation will not be helped with the fact that the university is planning a memorial for the Rector who was the culprit in their last mystery and who may have interfered devastatingly with their potential work on Earth...and rumors swirl about what happened between Pleiti and the Rector. And then there's the fact that Pleiti has such a hard time reading Mossa's thoughts - how much of those interactions show genuine interest, affection, and perhaps love towards Pleiti and how much are imagined?
Quick Thoughts:
As with the first book, this story begins with a prologue chapter set from Mossa's third person POV, where we get a good look at Mossa's feelings and hopes towards Pleiti - and Mossa's struggles to express those - before switching entirely to Pleiti's first person POV. This is an interesting way of telling the story, because so much of Pleiti's own struggles in this book come from her being unsure about Mossa's feelings - is Mossa expressing an interest in her safety for the investigation? Or because she cares? The reader has a better idea than Pleiti - the answer is yes and Mossa almost needs to make excuses to stay with Pleiti as she truly wants. And so a lot of this book is Pleiti's wavering and feeling of discomfort over whether her feelings are returned and whether Mossa will be there for her. And in a lesser author's hands, this plotline/character development could be insanely frustrating, but here it just feels right and the romance between these two people, both a little neurodivergent (but Mossa very much more), and seeing Pleiti discover from Mossa's actions that the attraction is genuine (although she still so often hesitates to believe it herself) just made me repeatedly smile, especially in the book's ending.
The mystery at the heart of this book kind of peters out with a whimper, but there's plenty here to entertain and interest even without it. For example you have Pleiti still struggling with the results of last book, and how one person acting so badly could ruin it for everyone...and the tantalizing possibility that the rector's impatient sending of things to Earth might've actually worked. And the things discovered during this mystery investigation here, illustrating more of this future setting, are interesting in and of themselves: as the title hints, they show how humans - in an effort to prove doubters wrong and to get away from the elites who frustrate and sometimes oppress them (here, in this case, the elites of the university from the platforms, especially in relation to those from the moon of Io who are looked down upon - in part because the first settlers of Io were corrupt rich assholes and that stigma has stuck to those who were merely the laborers of such colonists) - can sometimes embark on a reckless and unnecessary course of life. I'm not going to spoil how that plays out here, but Mossa, Pleiti and Older are very sympathetic to those people even as they think that such actions are most likely doomed to fail and not the right ones. And so it's all pretty damn interesting even aside from the romantic parts of the plot...and the romantic parts are still very good. Recommended and I look forward to book 3.
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