As the year is winding down I find myself in the position of staring aspirationally at my reading goal. I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet, so I am on the hunt for small books that will be a good way to spend my time and get me one step closer to that end. Clocking in at a mere 147 pages this little novella will charm, amaze, and move you. The only reason I wasn’t full-on sobbing at the end (cathartically, not with sadness) was that I was reading this at my kiddo’s fencing practice, where such a display would have been distracting. My (unsolicited) advice to you is to carefully choose the timing and physical environment where you read this book so that you may fully experience it and the array of emotions it will invoke.
Chambers has given us a world with a unique take on the sentient robot story. Instead of AI damning humanity, the robots in this world simply chose to go into the wilderness and leave humanity behind. Without advanced technology, humans have adapted and gone back to simpler ways. No one has seen a robot for hundreds of years. Our main character Sibling Dex is a tea monk in search of something. Change? Meaning? Purpose? What they are looking for is unclear. But when Mosscap the robot comes across Dex and they begin the first human/robot contact that has taken place in either of their lifetimes, they embark on an adventure that will change them both.
Chambers is here to ask the big questions; through Sibling Dex I found the words to articulate my biggest fear. “Yes, but – but that’s what scares me. My life is…it. There’s nothing else, on either end of it. I don’t have remnants in the same way that you do, or a plate inside my chest. I don’t know what my pieces were before they were me, and I don’t know what they’ll become after. All I have is right now, and at some point, I’ll just end, and I can’t predict when that will be, and – and if I don’t make the absolute most of it then I’ll have wasted something precious.” Yes yes YEEEEEEEES.
If my enthusiasm isn’t enough to intrigue you, I’m not alone. Every single human I know IRL who read it and is on Goodreads gave it a four or a five stars: no exceptions! What are you waiting for??? (Pro-tip: make sure you have the second volume at the ready, “A Prayer for the Crown Shy” or like me you’ll be waiting in agitation until it comes available at the library. Don’t be like me!!! Get them both at the same time.)
