This one didn’t make me cry nearly as much as its predecessor, Psalm for the Wild-Built, but that shouldn’t make you think that it didn’t have an emotional impact, it did make me tear up on more than one occasion. Because this novella is a meditation on what we call the human condition. It is also a look at how we can live if society puts happiness and contentment first. If we don’t compete but instead cooperate.
But its also the kind of novella that has that thought and moves on to other thoughts about the human condition. Do we need companionship? Do we need to pet a dog? Do we need to create? When the book begins Sibling Dex is still at a place of being mentally and emotionally exhausted where we left them. They are soul tired and decide early in the story that they are not going to perform tea service while taking Mosscap around. They cannot find the gumption for it but play it off as wanting to focus solely on helping Mosscap answer it’s question, which is also what their focus is.
This book is also a road trip story, but it’s a road trip aiming to interact with people so Mosscap can ask its question: “What do people need?” but the side effect of that quest is Mosscap coming to terms with its own needs and wants, its own sense of self, and its discovery of the joy of the perfect satchel to hold one’s things. I agree with emmalita that Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a book with a much different pace and feeling than Psalm because Sibling Dex and Mosscap are with other people.
I picked the category Time for this one thinking I might pick something on the level end of the spectrum for the reasoning (I couldn’t figure out another square I wanted it for, and I knew I was reading it RIGHT NOW) but it is so much more than that. The quiet humming heart of this book is giving yourself time. Allowing yourself beautiful, precious time to do what you need and what you want. To find a way to know deep within that you deserve it without having to earn it – whatever your it happens to be.
Bingo Square: Time