After the end of The Mimicking of Known Successes, Mossa and Pleiti discover another strange disappearance to solve in The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. Several disappearances, actually, as students and staff are disappearing from Pleiti’s workplace, Valdegeld University. Not a lot, not enough that anyone except Mossa had noticed and anyway, surely some of the missing are just students who slept through class or dropped out, right?

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles has the same wonderful gaslamps gas giant setting, full of cozy vibes in harsh space, again with a mystery. I loved The Mimicking of Known Successes, really my only concern with the first novel is that the world was so new and different that I was still sorting out how the world worked, instead of solving the mystery. In the second novella, I understood more of the future world on Giant, so I could enjoy and engage in the mystery part more. Pleiti and the rest of the Classics department of Valdegeld are researching lost Earth ecosystems, in the hopes of someday making the destroyed planet Earth habitable again. From here, Pleiti’s mixed emotions over the end of the last novel, her future at the university, and why there might be dissidents unhappy with the pace of discovery all made sense.

I think because I was more familiar with life on Jupiter by the second novella, I was able to enjoy the setting more in this one, too.  We have the same world of train-connected platforms circling Jupiter, each platform with  slightly different lifestyle and production, like a series of villages, separated by swirling gases. There are interesting pieces of preserved language from old Earth, and conscious choice not to name everything, say, New Oxford. I felt like I was just wrapping myself up in this believable but very different life on future Jupiter.

There’s more about how humans came to Giant, about the generation before Pleiti and Mossa, about life on Io, and about Mossa’s own background. Ok, there were a couple unexplored hints about life on Io, and while Pleiti is patiently waiting for Mossa to explain in her own time, on her own terms, I was mentally screaming about it. CEO descendants giving tours of their former escape pods!

I liked seeing their relationship evolve, too. You could see how Mossa’s extreme logic led her to be a bit of a challenging girlfriend. At one point, Pleiti arrives to find her bags packed for an immediate surprise trip, because Mossa remembers a previous misunderstanding and doesn’t want Pleiti to feel left out or abandoned. There would definitely be challenges ahead, but I felt like the characters actually cared for each other.

Look, I need to give you all a spoiler right here. When I saw the title, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, I couldn’t help thinking of the third-act unnecessary breakup trope. Ugh no. I hate the miscommunication for the purpose of getting back together, and I double hate it for Mossa and Pleiti. So, I’m gonna spoil it and explain that there are many unnecessary obstacles, in life and in the mystery, but there’s no crappy forced breakup and reconciliation here.

Instead, there’s an intriguing mystery to solve, with a surprising resolution, all in the wonderful gaslamps gas giant world.