A Psalm for the Wild-Built

eBook, 160 pages

English language

Published July 2, 2021 by Tom Doherty Associates.

ISBN:
978-1-250-23622-7
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4 stars (22 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?

3 editions

Review of 'A Psalm for the Wild-Built' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I loved the setting of this book. This is a world where monks travel on bicycles pulling wagons behind them. They come into towns and set up small tea stations. They serve the exact tea blend that a person needs to help with their emotional needs. The service is a mix of therapy and just having a quiet space to sit and think for an hour. It is very peaceful.

Sibling Dex has worked hard to become the best tea monk. However, it isn’t satisfying them in the way that they thought it would. They want to take a side trip out into the wilds to an abandoned monastery they heard about. On the way, they meet a representative sent from the robots. Robots gained autonomy generations ago. They left human areas and haven’t been heard from since. Now one has been sent to see what is going on with …

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.

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