Book Review (in Advance): The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

If I did not actually squeal upon being approved for an advance copy of The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, the sequel to The Mimicking of Known Successes (my review here), I probably came pretty close! One of my favorite parts of working at Barnes & Noble, all those years ago, was getting to read books before they came out, and clearly I still feel that way.

This one comes out in February (when I will repost this review)(hurries off to make note on calendar), so if you don't want to know anything more about it yet than that it's good, feel free to opt out of the rest of this for now (though I am trying to avoid spoilers).

Like the first book, this is a mystery in a science fiction setting; the issues of where they are (Jupiter), and why (humans utterly destroyed life on Earth and there are many disagreements on what to do next, and/or how best to start it over), definitely play into the mystery, but at the heart of it, "what happened to this person who seems to be missing" is the mystery. 

Mossa and Pleiti are working out their own relationship as well, what they mean to each other and who is willing to say what, but they work together well, playing to the strengths of each in researching what happened.

Side note, I do appreciate how many words I had to look up, as they turn out to be from a variety of languages; of course, not all words should be derived from English, I had never thought about it but why would they?

Who knew that the mystery/sci-fi mashup could be so appealing? Malka Older is firmly on my check-this-author-out list from now on.

(I don't usually post twice in one day, but I put up my review of Thornhedge earlier, don't miss that!)