A Psalm for the Wild-Built

by Becky Chambers

(60 reviews)

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They're going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

4 editions

bookafnd reviewed A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot, #1)

solarpunk road trip?

5 stars

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

Kube reviewed A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot, #1)

Oh gosh this tackles the big stuff

5 stars

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

sarah reviewed A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot, #1)

cozy sorrows

4 stars

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.

Library Orb reviewed A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot, #1)

The Parable for the Great Resignation

5 stars

A short work delivered with wit, insight, and a hopeful vision of the future. Sibling Dex and Mosscap are characters that bounce off each other wonderfully, as the book peddles along at an easy clip.

If ever a work felt like a breath of fresh air, this is it.

Martin Kopischke reviewed A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot, #1)

Humane sci-fi. With robots.

4 stars

There isn’t much I can add to loppear@bookwyrm.social’s review; once again, Chambers is simply wonderful. Here, she is running with the wholesome if slightly insipid promise for the future Solarpunk holds to explore human condition and (not entirely incidentally, I suspect) thumb a very long nose at the whole “machine uprising” crowd. I don’t know how someone can be so relentlessly, melancholically upbeat, but I do know I had to finish this before work, and that I had a little happy cry when I did.