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3.5 

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

By Malka Older
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Named a Best Sci-Fi Book of 2024 by Esquire

Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a new mystery in the follow-up to the cozy space-opera detective mystery The Mimicking of Known Successes, which Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders called “an utter triumph.”


Mossa has returned to Valdegeld on a missing person’s case, for which she’ll once again need Pleiti’s insight. Seventeen students and staff members have disappeared from Valdegeld University—yet no one has noticed. The answers to this case may lie on the moon of Io—Mossa’s home—and the history of Jupiter’s original settlements during humanity's exodus from Earth.

But Pleiti’s faith in her life’s work as a scholar of the past has grown precarious, and this new case threatens to further destabilize her dreams for humanity’s future, as well as her own.

The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti
The Mimicking of Known Successes
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

The Centenal Cycle
Infomocracy
Null States
State Tectonics

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles Reviews

3.5
“This series has SO MUCH HEART. Come for the mystery, stay for the tea, scones, and incredible team-up of leading ladies Mossa and Pleiti. I love our intergalactic sapphic sleuths 🥰 Side note: I love that there is a murderbot opera in this world, omg.”

About Malka Older

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. She is the Executive Director of Global Voices, a community of writers, editors, and translators providing community journalism from all over the world and advocating for indigenous and minority languages, media literacy, digital rights, and online freedom of expression. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named among the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, the Washington Post, and Book Riot; with sequels, it was a finalist for a Hugo award. The Mimicking of Known Successes, a murder mystery set on Jupiter, was on four best of 2023 lists and was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte awards for Best Novella. The sequel, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, was named one of the best science-fiction books of 2024 by Esquire, and the third book in the series, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, comes out in June 2025. She is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, where she teaches on predictive fictions. She is co-editor of We Will Rise Again, an anthology of speculative fiction about social justice movements, coming out in December 2025.

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