“You and I -- we're just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”

Did not anticipate crying over the robot monk book, but here we are.

This gave me the same feeling that Howl's Moving Castle did the first time I watched it; which is child-like wonder and an awful lot of yearning. Becky Chambers delivered a perfect hug in book form.

Thoughts about personhood and human purpose set against the backdrop of an enlightened, wildly empathetic world. For tea lovers, peace seekers, and Roomba sympathizers.

(Added bonus of a non-binary main character.) ( )

A Psalm for the Wild-Built was wonderful. It was gently paced. Leisurely, but didn’t feel slow. I intend to read the next Monk and Robot book, but I don’t feel in a rush to do so.

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This book is such a joyful, peaceful journey of the heart. I loved the monk and I loved the robot and I want to spend more time with them both.

M: "How does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?"

R: "Because I know that no matter what, I'm wonderful." ( )

Becky Chambers is an unpredictable author, at least from my point of view. I like at least two of her books enough to reread them regularly. Another one, I found so tedious that I couldn’t finish it.

This one is amiable and pleasant enough, but it’s short (a novella) and rather aimless. Not a lot happens. It feels rather like reading the first half of an Arthur Ransome novel.

When I started it, I immediately found that the third-person protagonist, Sibling Dex, is very frequently referred to as ‘they’, despite being apparently singular. I found this so distracting and irritating that I had to stop reading.

After a while, I decided that Dex is suffering from a personal peculiarity, a delusion of being plural. And I’ve been reading sf all my life, so I can cope with characters more peculiar than that, surely? OK, I managed to finish the story. I still found Dex’s peculiarity pointless and somewhat irritating, but indeed, I could cope with it; and in fact the frequency of ‘they’ diminished as the story went on.

After a while Dex encounters a sentient robot named Mosscap—full name Splendid Speckled Mosscap (taken from the name of a mushroom). Mosscap is referred to as ‘it’, to which it has no objection, and I have no objection. I think I prefer Mosscap to Dex. It seems equally friendly and more sensible. ( )

A philosophical adventure more than anything, this was a beautifully written and intimate portrait of a future world. The world, that one might call a utopia, still has pain and confusion, and the journey that Dex takes is one exploring their own sense of unease.

The plot is fairly small, but it immediately made me want the second book in the series, which is a mark of honor in my experience. ( )