A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers seems to have a direct line to my heart and soul. This story's quiet interactions and deep exploration of Dex's inner landscape are the soft, welcoming escape I desperately needed. With our world in states of such constant chaos, it's so nice to be able to disappear into a new world so incredibly different and full of compassion.

Panga is something of a paradise, where capitalism and industry are consciously rejected. It's a world where a nonbinary monk can serve tea for a living, without fear of bigotry or poverty. It's also a world that still holds scars from its wasteful past, most notably in the sentient robots left over after the factories shut down. The balance here is so well done, and it moves me to both hope and grief.

Dex is wonderfully faceted, with plenty of growing and exploring of their own heart to build a story around. Mosscap is an utter joy as it explores new places and people, with its own unique perspective on the concept of self and responsibility. They both speak to me in such deeply meaningful and wildly different ways.

Overall, this is a delight of a book. The audiobook has stunning voice work, with the narrator infusing a sense of peace and contentment into the story that I think suits it perfectly.

An interesting, character driven story that starts with a monk that is dissatisfied with the way their (singular they) life is and goes on a voyage of exploration as a tea monk, serving various kinds of teas they has selected to people who just need to unwind.

But even this proves not to be enough to quell the unease in the monk, and they go on a journey to visit an abandoned place in what would be the wild part of the moon the monk inhabits. On the journey, they would encounter the first sentient robot (the robots left for the wild woods after gaining sentience) to be seen by man for many years, who is also on a journey to find out what people need.

In their journey together, they would converse on the nature of man and robot, their desires and curiosity about each other and the world around them. By the end, the monk may, perhaps, have found what they want. But their journey to find out what other people want may be just beginning.

Not much is actually revealed about the world they inhabit (how it came about, etc.), but a quiet, gentle book about a person and a robot with differing points of view discussing the nature of how people might live and see the nature of their world.

An interesting change from the usual plot and science driven SF that I usually read.

Becky Chamber's works are rare among science fiction stories because instead of action-adventure plots they're about people talking about what it means to be alive.

The first couple of chapters felt like the plot was jumping around a hell of a lot, because they're really just backstory/preamble for the actual story

It's good that there will be a sequel because I do want to know what both Mosscap and Dex will do next

A gorgeous poke at a plausible, palpable, provocative world. Also: a timely addition to the "sad-happy speculative fiction" corpus.

Read this in Teixcalaan recovery mode and loved it. I think I was supposed to find it optimistic and cozy etc etc and I did. But I also found deep sorrows hiding in its slant looks at how we live now. So: it's about stopping to rest but it's also about getting the purpose to do better.