The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

, #3

256 pages

English language

Published June 10, 2025

ISBN:
978-1-250-39606-8
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Goodreads:
217388049

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(3 reviews)

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.

1 edition

reviewed The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #3)

Nice

It seems to me that the books in this series should be read more closely together than they are published. This one featured the effects of what happened in the first one as an important aspect of the story but I didn't remember the details very well. I liked how Mossa's and Pleiti's relationship has grown over the course of the books. We also get to explore another platform and its quirks more closely. The plot is also linked to the way people are living on Giant, like the first two, and I really like that about the series.

reviewed The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #3)

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

I wonder sometimes if too high expectations make me more likely to be disappointed in a book. I feel like the Mossa and Pleiti series should be my jam: it's lesbian scifi detective fiction set on an Oxford-esque Jupiter space habitats. This one was pretty good, but the first book is still my favorite.

The details of the mystery in this book are the most solid of the trilogy, and (in some ways) I like Pleiti getting a chance to try to do some investigating on her own. Unfortunately, the romance angle suffers from acute "please just talk to each other" syndrome where they each worry on their own about what the other is thinking and feeling.

This is also maybe a minor and petty opinion, but it felt like this book over-did loan words from other languages; arguably, in universe this could be part of the academic study of …

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