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4.0 

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

By Malka Older
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

The next entry in the multi-award-nominated cozy space-opera mystery series The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti!

When a former classmate begs Pleiti for help on behalf of her cousin—who’s up for a prestigious academic position at a rival Jovian university but has been accused of plagiarism on the eve of her defense—Pleiti agrees to investigate the matter.

Even if she has to do it without Mossa, her partner in more ways than one. Even if she’s still reeling from Mossa’s sudden isolation and bewildering rejection.

Yet what appears to be a case of an attempted reputational smearing devolves into something decidedly more dangerous—and possibly deadly.

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

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 Potency of Ungovernable Impulses Reviews

4.0
“Again, not a perfect book technically, but a 5-star experience for me. I will read the books in this series as long as they keep being released. This felt like a homage to The Hound of the Baskervilles and I really enjoyed the character development between Pleiti and Mossa. I also really liked what the author did with linguistics (although, to be completely honest, there were one or two examples that felt a little too pop culture / cringey for my tastes — but not enough to drop my rating). Overall, another solid, cozy, sapphic-sleuths-in-space experience 🥰”
“A nice lil cozy space opera to start the year”

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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