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Relationship of Affection: A Short Review of The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-12

Should I Read This: Absolutely.

Book Seller Link (non-affiliate but I do now the owner): The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses.

Author’s Website: Global Voices · Local perspectives for a global audience

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Dr. Malka Older (that’s right — not only is she an excellent writer, she’s earned a doctorate too. What have you done this week? Yeah, me either.) is the third novella in her Mossa and Pleti Mysteries series. I have enjoyed each one, this one the most.

The series is set on a Jupiter after it has been colonized because the Earth’s environment has been destroyed. Dr. Older has created a wonderfully slow-paced new world, more reminiscent of the 19th century than our hectic reality. The world building in these books is amazing, as much a character as any of the participants on the page. She does an excellent job of creating this world for us on the fly. The way a character tries to connect to what she thinks her ancestors on Earth would have felt as she lays on the settlement’s only grass hill or the way that people complain about the harshness of electric light versus gas lamps — the book is filled with these small, calm moments that tell us so much about the culture of her new world.

The book’s use of language is also a delight. The characters speak more in a roundabout, meandering, half-formal style that I associate with 19th century novels. That style does a wonderful job not only informing us about the pace of their lives but also reinforces how strange this hyper-technological civilization really is. The use of words from several different languages in common speech does more to impress upon the reader the polyglot nature of the world than any other method of exposition. And, of course, it is a delight to read — a style both sharp and indulgent.

The style also serves the emotional and thematic core of the books. On a mechanical level, these books are about slow revealing mysteries. Thematically, though, each one has been about the different sides of an emotion. This book, as you can probably glean from the title, is about attraction. The way Mossa and Pleti circle, bounce off, and entangle with each other is extremely well done. Mossa codes, to me, as both autistic and depressive but Dr. Older never treats those conditions as things to gawk at or as an excuse for platitudes or mawkishness. The way Pleti deals with both her attraction to Mossa and the frustrations and emotional whiplash of Mossa’s conditions feels very real. Speaking as someone who has family members with these conditions, Dr. Older’s ability to dramatize them in Mossa without making Mossa a Very Special Character, allowing her to be a person with all the good and bad that entails, is a delight.

The mystery, as mentioned, also ties into the theme of the book quite well. This is the best mystery of the three in the series, in my mind, in part because I think this one is the most closely tied to the emotional weight of the rest of the book. In addition to the discourse on various emotions, the three books have a running undercurrent of interrogating how you move on from disaster, how you can possibly make the right choices when all the choices are inadequate. This book does an excellent job of tying that running theme into the main mystery as well, giving it an emotional and intellectual weight that was not as clear, at least to me, in the previous books. And, frankly, the way the final confrontation ends is ludicrous, perfectly setup, and perfectly appropriate.

This book is a joy to read. It combines a marvelous use of language with excellently drawn emotions, a fun adventure mystery, and a lingering intellectual and cultural challenge sadly relevant for the times, all expertly tied together with perhaps the most unique world in recent sci-fi history. I flew through this in one evening and suspect you will do the same.

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