Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Now I’m craving scones, tea, and a nap in a cozy railcar

The Mimicking of Known Successes: The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti #1 by Malka Older

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CBR16 Bingo: Earth Day A man vanishes off the platform on the edge of the planet. No one saw him leave but his sudden disappearance is noticed by the small community of people who call this sparsely populated platform home. Mossa, an official investigator, is sent to find out what happened to him. After her initial search turns up nothing but a small lead, she travels to Valdegeld and seeks out Pleiti, a classical Earth researcher and her ex-girlfriend. The story is told from Pleiti’s […]

A Gaslamp-Inspired Sci-Fi Mystery

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

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The Mimicking of Known Successes imagines a future where humanity, having completely wrecked Earth and then Mars, has settled on the rings of Jupiter. The entire civilization lives on a series of platforms orbiting above the gas planet, connected to one another across the rings by a series of rail lines. On one of the most distant platforms a man has gone missing. He seems to have stepped off the platform to his death, but why? Inspector Mossa follows his trail back to the university […]

A cozy sff mystery novella that is set in the future but feels like it’s set in the past.

The Mimicking of Known Successes (Mossa and Pleiti, #1) by Malka Older

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 27/30 This was really good! I loved the vibes and the writing and the setting. Definitely reading book two. I’m honestly surprised how much I liked this. It’s really hard to find great, vibesy sci-fi these days. A lot of sff authors go for the colder, more depressing, gritty machine-like futures, I think forgetting that humans like to be COMFY. Even though this book is set after humans have colonized Jupiter (of all places); the humans here […]

“Come along, Pleiti, you can practice ethnography later. We have a murder to solve.”

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

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I loved Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes. The second Mossa and Pleiti novella, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles was also a delightful read. There was a moment in the story when I thought back to a conversation I had years ago with a much younger cousin who was still in his 20s. He began expounding on his desire to live somewhere that tested his grit, a place with “real” problems, like on the gritty prestige cop shows he watched. I didn’t point out all […]

Mossa responded simply with a Classical quotation: “‘Why are men?’”

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

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This seems like a book that would bring delight to many Cannonballers. Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes was a perfect listen to transition from 2023 to 2024. Just over 4 hours long, I listened to Lindsey Dorcus’ narration instead of the booms of neighborhood fireworks, and then finished up this morning with my first coffee of the year. I knew going in that Known Successes was a sapphic scifi Holmsian mystery set on a human colony on Jupiter. What I love is that […]



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