I adored Becky Chambers’ The Wayfarers series, so when I found out that she had a newer series I jumped at the chance to put it in my Libby queue. While it took a while to work its way into my grubby hands (err e-reader), it actually ended up being the absolutely perfect book to read in January: A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a calm, sweet novella in the midst of the “new year, new you” advertisements being hurled my direction elsewhere.
Sibling Dex is a monk. They are content overall, but something is…missing. They begin fixating on hearing crickets, which are nearly extinct on their planet thanks to their ancestors’ penchant for destroying the environment (sound familiar??). Luckily for humankind, one day in the distant past all robots suddenly became self-aware, and rather than going Terminator on humans, they simply put down their tools and wandered into the wilderness, never to be seen again. This had a net positive effect for humans, because they were forced to learn to live more in harmony with nature and to stop relying on unsustainable practices to fuel their day-to-day lives.
So, Dex lives in a world replete with solar power and mini wind turbines and world peace…but no crickets, at least in the areas still settled by humans. So, they decide to become a Tea Monk and travel the countryside in a very cool sounding camper-bike serving homemade herbal concoctions to folks who just need to take a little break from daily life (Umm, dream job). But…there are still no crickets, even in these sparsely populated regions. And SOMETHING is still missing. One day Dex turns their bike toward the true wilderness, abandoned by humans at the end of the Factory Age, determined to find someplace where they can go to sleep at night with a chorus of crickets as a lullaby. On their first night in the wilderness, a robot stumbles into their campsite, and thus the first cross-cultural exchange between humans and robots begins!
Becky Chambers books are, to me, like a deep sigh at the end of a long day. If you are looking for action or conflict or tension, Becky Chambers novels are not for you. If you want to read a deeply optimistic book where folks are generally kind to each other and you find yourself tearing up when one character offers another a cup of tea, then Becky Chambers novels will be right up your alley. A Psalm for the Wild-Built presents a world that I desperately wish we could all step into: a world of progress, gentleness, and genuine caring. Just as Dex serves tea to anyone who just needs to “take a moment,” Chambers’ books feel like a special treat. While some of the pages-long dialogues dealing with philosophical questions such as the nature of mortality, cross-cultural differences, and the robot’s ultimate question of “what do humans need?” might feel like a drag for some readers, for me these passages were kept interesting and accessible by the sheer affection that grows between the two characters.
I don’t think that A Psalm for the Wild Built is necessarily for everyone, but for me it was a perfect book that came to me at just the right time.
