Becky Chambers

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future. 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? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Amelia Hruby

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don't know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don't need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new series gives us hope for the future. 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?

Sashi

"What am I supposed to do, if not this? What am I, if not this?"

“Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?"

l am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can't define what that something more is simply by our raw components.

erin alise 

We all just want to be comfortable, well-fed, and unafraid. 

I bet you could travel that road for days and never see another person, they thought. The wagon's got all you need.

They pulled out their pocket computer, as was their habit first thing, dimly aware of the hope that always spurred them to do so-that there might be something good there, something exciting or nourishing, something that would replace the weariness.

Clara Schweiger

Before long, Dex was no longer nursing something as simple as an odd fancy for a faraway insect. The itch had spread into every aspect of their life. When they looked up at the skyscrapers, they no longer marveled at their height but despaired at their density-endless stacks of humanity, packed in so close that the vines that covered their engi- neered casein framnes could lock tendrils with one another. The intense feeling of containment within the City became intolerable. Dex wanted to inhabit a place that spread not up but out.

Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city. It doesn't matter if you've spent your entire adult life in a city, as was the case for Sibling Dex. It doesn't matter if the city is a good city, as Panga's only City was. It doesn't ter that your friends are there, as well as every building you love, every park whose best hidden corners you know, ev- ery street your feet instinctively follow without needing to check for directions. The City was beautiful, it really was. A towering architectural celebration of curves and polish and colored light, laced with the connective threads of el- evated rail lines and smooth footpaths, Alocked with leaves that spilled lushly from every balcony and center divider, each inhaled breath perfumed with cooking spice, fresh nectar, laundry drying in the pristine air. The City was a healthy place, a thriving place. A never-ending harmony of making, doing, growing, trying, laughing, running, living.

Alli

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don't know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

“That's something I'm doing. Thats not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug…”

The place ahead was simply the world, as the world had always been and would always be. Dex was, presumably, a part of it, a product of it, a being inextricably tied to its machinations. And yet, faced with the prospect of entering the world unaided, unaltered, Dex felt helpless. Hopeless.

Naomi J.

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said.

sage

Marisa S. Pan 

it was tragic to reach the end and realize that this, in present time and for present me, is a good book, but that if i had read it when i was younger, it would have been great (which is to say, this would’ve been a 5 star read for past me). i still really really enjoyed this book! the characters, the exploration of this cyberpunk world filled with new and old, light and darkness, and the prose were all so lovely. it was such a cozy read that i'm glad i picked up <3

avie

Really loved this solarpunk, utopian adventure. So many moments that had me imagining a better world.

exactly what i needed rn. beautiful, thoughtful, philosophical. 

Ellie Younger

Phenomenal book. Beautiful writing, interesting characters, and the message had me sitting and staring into the sky for hours. Please read this book. It’s one of the first in its genre of solar punk and leaves you feeling hopeful and inspired. 

Vienna Cragin

this book was short sweet delicate and an excellent look into the philosophy of humans.

isabelle

I was expecting a cozy little story about a monk and a robot going on an adventure so I was pleasantly surprised by how this book made me feel and think. Everyone has times where they feel like they've lost their purpose in life and go into a downward spiral struggling to understand what to do next to give their life meaning. And this book answers that question brilliantly, just be. That's it. Go on one adventure at a time even if it's as simple as learning to make a cup of tea.

Cassidy Webb

ren corr

this was such a beautiful imagining of what the future could look like!

Keira

ephe

Omar 

At a time where I am stretched to my utmost limit, I picked up this book and it was like looking into a mirror, pages and pages of myself caught in the reflection, like after line of dialogue that echoed thoughts I’ve had for months. 

I loved this book immensely. My only issue with it is how short it was. It warmed me up, made me cry, gave me a hug. It looked at me, cocked its head, and told me not to worry. That I needn’t know what I was doing, needn’t have a purpose. That everything was fine.

And then it prodded me to have some tea.

Becky chambers has a talent for writing the warmth that other sci-fi and speculative fiction miss out on, and it’s a joy to sit and revel in it. Her characters are very real in the sense that they behave just interestingly enough to be people, but not erratically enough to be made-up ones. Something about that, I think, has to do with how real the main concerns of either of the duo are. Since they are so real, so part of the human experience, that same humanness permeates the characters too. She did not write what she knew, as is the advice, but wrote what we all know. 

Can’t wait for the second book.

Kaylee Ray

i found this book exactly when i needed it and i’m grateful for that

In the presence of Mosscap and Sibling Dex, I feel a sense of home. Those who have read this book are likely to wholeheartedly recommend it. I also give it a perfect 10/10. I won’t go into specifics, but I invite you to experience it for yourself (do take my word for it). 

🏹

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

In the presence of Mosscap and Sibling Dex, I feel a sense of home. Those who have read this book are likely to wholeheartedly recommend it. I also give it a perfect 10/10. I won’t go into specifics, but I invite you to experience it for yourself (do take my word for it). 

Dani

4.25 ⭐️
i cant really form coherent thoughts about this other than: soothing, comforting, calming and: mosscap, i would do ANYTHING for you

Groundbreaking? No. Gentle, warm, hopeful? Yeah :') Maybe that's groundbreaking in itself.

this book is super cozy and came to me at a good time after a very stressful jan. i enjoy sci-fi books, but liked that this kind of a different take on the genre. if you want a cozy read, when you are lost in life or stressed this book is great. 

alice l

What a beautiful, lovely, warm, cozy story. Made my heart ache at times, but soothed it at the same time.

Emma

allison chen

“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”
--------------------

A tea monk on a quest to hear crickets sing.
A robot named after a mushroom living in the wild.
And a question waiting to be answered. “What do people need?”

Delightful from the very start, A Psalm For The Wild-Built was one of the most charming, wholesome, cozy, and thoughtful books I have ever read. Infused with a certain naivety and a calm at its center, the story of a monk and a robot meeting in the wild nature feels reflective and soothing to the soul at the same time.

Without a doubt, this has become one of my favorite books of all time, to be cherished and reread in moments where doubt and darkness might be creeping in. A beautiful journey, a beautiful experience, a beautiful world. I feel like we all could do with a bit of sunshine right about now.

Deepika Ramesh

Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

In Becky Chambers’s first solarpunk, A Psalm For The Wild-Built, Sibling Dex had everything they wanted — they were raised in a farm, by parents who didn’t scar them for life, and they left behind a comfortable, safe life to become a tea monk, to hand out many cups of tea and to listen to their visitors lament about the death of their marriages breaching the surface after their cat passed away or worry about dogs who wouldn’t stop swallowing socks. Sibling Dex did what the tea monks were expected to do: travelled, parked their wagon, set up a cozy spot with generous amounts of quilts and cushions, served tea with herbs to let the restless minds stay still even if it’s just for brief moments, and let the routine spill from one day to another. Was that enough for Sibling Dex? No. Somewhere crickets were chirping, and Sibling Dex wanted to be there where the real sound of real crickets could caress their being. The device in their hand, eager to please as ever, could emulate the sound, but Sibling Dex knew they left the city to listen to the real, urgent conversations of crickets. The harder they tried, the worse they felt about the purpose that flickered like a mirage. Who brought solace and wisdom for Sibling Dex and told them that they were wonderful as they were and that it was enough to marvel at life for what it was? Not a philosopher spewing dense text about the purposelessness of life, but Splendid Speckled Mosscap, the robot.

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.

Sibling Dex’s crickets are my writing. In the last two months, since I published my last book review here, I engaged with art in many forms: books, movies, shows, essays, music, artworks with which I followed many cycles of my breath. Fragments of my reflections about those appeared as vignettes here and there. Family visited. Good food was devoured. Loved ones healed. I took a long stride on my own path of healing, too. Oh, and career has been in the eye of a storm, but it’s going to be adventurous and rewarding, I hope. Invigorating conversations with friends take place everywhere, online and offline. I am there for people, the ones in flesh and bone, the ones blinking as cursors on white screens everywhere, the literary ones, and above all, myself. Like Sibling Dex, I wake up with prayers and gratitude for this perfect-in-its-own-way life, and I still hear a voice swimming to the top and settling like bubbles in a drink. ‘Something is missing.’ That ‘something’ has always been writing. And it’s not like I call, leave voice notes, languish in circle-back and low-hanging-fruit and leverage entirely. There is writing. There is an atom of my writer’s heart left in all the places where I leave my words. But this year should have been the one for fiction writing, discipline, and some structure in life to make room for more words. Life is refracted, however, the rainbow — the writing — doesn’t appear on the other end. My crickets are chirping somewhere. I can’t hear them.

When Sibling Dex was a child, their father took them to a monastery, where the tea monks treated Dex like an adult, where Dex witnessed a stream of people — people with, what Dex deemed as, important jobs — pour into the monastery to do nothing but only to enjoy a cup of tea offered by the monks. The monastery was like a waterbody, like birdbaths, springs, ponds, where animals cooled off, quenched their thirst, and found the strength to start the next leg of their journey. People with important jobs relished mugs of tea and short respite, and moved on with the pressing things in life. They found the strength to do both — to do the important job and to rest. When Sibling Dex shared that memory with Splendid Speckled Mosscap, I felt like I was offered a mug of tea by the book. As Sibling Dex realised that the yin and yang of rest and work could endlessly follow each other, that one could find the strength to do both, and when Mosscap finally declared that everyone is wonderful as they are, somewhere near Sibling Dex, crickets gently chirped, and I am here writing this piece and collecting the courage to dream about writing more, captions or stories or blogs or reviews. So long as the chirping goes, that’s good enough.

Becky Chambers dedicated this embrace of a book ‘for anybody who could use a break’. I have never seen a dedication on a book more personal and generous as that. A Psalm For The Wild-Built is also an answer to the question why we read and write — to lay stretched out on quilts laid out by writers and to draw strength from words handed out by them like mugs of warm tea.

I'm used to reading intense sci-fi or dystopian novels, so this was such a breath of fresh air. This book caught me at the right time, so I absolutely loved it. I'm also glad that I read it as an audiobook because the dialogues felt so real. Overall, this book gave me a sense of comfort and joy. 

Mirror

Cody Degen

Kenna

a very cozy read and definitely lived up to what is said about it. the characters (even the robot) were incredibly human in a comforting way and the end has me smiling :)

Iman Kamil

** spoiler alert **
           This book came to me at the right time (unsure about my job, not knowing where my life is going, feeling dissatisfied overall with the way things are going as a 25-year-old, etc.) and it made me ugly cry at how comforting of a read it is. 

Can't say much more without spoiling it but PLEASE read it. Not much happens in the book in terms of action and adventure, but it's 100% worth a read, really short read too which is a bonus point!

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

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