A Psalm for the Wild-Built

I'm such a huge fan of all the Becky Chambers books. The author's work continues to amaze me with futuristic stories full of hope and diversity. A Psalm for the Wild-Built is no exception to that. The ideas I loved most in this story were humanity reacting with acceptance when the robots gained sentience far in the past. That humanity adapted to life without them. But also the idea that what those robots chose to do with their lives was to retreat to nature and study it, with excitement and curiosity. The idea that a robot created to work in industry would then turn around and spend decades just watching a tree grow for no other reason than because it was fascinating, is such a refreshing take. And of course, it's a lot more complex than all of that, but the story doesn't feel overly complicated. These are the kind of stories we need in this day and age.

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.