- The Good: Set on Jupiter, humans survive on a planet with no surface
- The Bad: Thin on romance, exploration of the scifi concept, or stakes
- The Literary: Erudite characters, including an expert on Earth literature
Following the trail of a man gone missing, Investigator Mossa finds herself on a university campus where her former girlfriend researches the possibility of humanity one day returning to Earth.
My favorite part of this novella is the worldbuilding. Set on Jupiter, the human outpost survives on a world with no surface, held together by a planet-wide distribution of platforms connected by rail. The environmental themes of an Earth wasted by human hands are front and center, as humans, animals, and Earth plants survive in small designated pods on an inhospitable world.
A man disappears from a remote rail station, and the Holmesian mystery is thus set into motion. Mossa’s detective style is a toned-down Holmes, unwilling to share her methodology or logic until she is proven correct. Pleiti is her resourceful and loyal sidekick, a la Watson, who fills in the “human” details.
As a reader you feel their familiarity towards each other, but their rekindled feelings are too quiet. Billed as a sapphic romance, the love story is underwhelming.
This follows the trend of cozy science fiction, in which you want to sit alongside the characters drinking tea and eating scones in the university cafe. The rattling trains and hazy poisonous gases of Jupiter call to mind a steampunk 19th century Victorian London. Unfortunately, the cozy academia lends itself to a low stakes and slow plot that I don’t find very engaging.
Recommended as a cozy mystery in space or fans of Holmes spin-offs!