{"id":3179,"date":"2023-09-28T15:51:25","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T15:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2023-10-12T16:36:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T16:36:10","slug":"the-imposition-of-unnecessary-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3179","title":{"rendered":"The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Whenever you love a book\u2014that would be me and the first book in this series, <em>The Mimicking of Known Successes<\/em>\u2014you can only approach the next installation with some trepidation. So I\u2019m happy to report that this book more than lives up to my expectations\u2014<\/strong>although it\u2019s important to read the books in order. It\u2019s set against a rather simple mystery: 17 students and staff members are missing from Valdegeld, the Oxbridge-like university where Pleiti is a professor. This is a space opera and a detective story, a romance and a cozy mystery, with the investigation led by Mossa, Pleiti\u2019s lover and a detective, who in this story explicitly asks Pleiti for her help. Set in part on Giant, the huge rings that surround Jupiter and where many humans have settled, this narrative includes a lengthy trip to far-off Io, one of Jupiter\u2019s moons. The pleasures in this book are many. There\u2019s the growing relationship between the two women, especially Pleiti\u2019s worries that Mossa may not have feelings as strong as she does. There\u2019s the brilliant world-building, with special attention to the far-off settlements the two women seek out, revealing the fascinating means of travel and the many smaller, human communities scattered across the vast planet. Finally, there are ruminations from Pleiti about the aim of returning to Earth, her research area, and the hints of political dissent. Brilliant on all counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever you love a book\u2014that would be me and the first book in this series, The Mimicking of Known Successes\u2014you can only approach the next installation with some trepidation. So&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[70,69,74,109,73,182],"class_list":["post-3179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-lesbian","tag-lgbtq","tag-mystery","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction","tag-space-opera"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Unnecessary-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Unnecessary-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}