Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the shortest book that ever took me all day to read. But that's my fault, I kept pressing start and then getting distracted and having to start again.

I think the setting for this is great. Technology somehow woke up and shortly after decided to part ways with humanity. This leaves our philosophising monks firstly stumped as to how their calculators suddenly became conscious and secondly bewildered as to why the living tech would not want to partake in human society.

So, in some fashion it is agreed that humans may have exactly half of the Earth to use while the remainder of species, including the fledgling tech, would remain unmolested on the other half. Wouldn't you love to see how that map was drawn up?! But it's not about the politics of that decision, it's about the maturity of it and of the respectful actions that followed it.

We meet Dex serving as a Garden Monk, many many years after the separation, at the time when they choose to quit that line of work in order to become a Tea Monk instead.

"Tea service wasn’t anything arcane. People came to the wagon with their problems and left with a fresh-brewed cup."

Tea Monks are much more important than you might guess. Like a cross between an aromatherapist and a counsellor they listen to your drama, perhaps offer up some comforting words and then select a tea to suit your ailment. However, with no training at all Dex pretty much freezes up on their first customer who blurts out "my cat died last night" followed by a whole heap of heavy stuff about their strained relationship at home. Dex mucks up their words and spills the tea in response and quickly realises that they were not at all prepared for this. The situation was quite hilarious.

After this Dex spends a few years perfecting their new craft and does take some pride in being the best Tea Monk in business, learning to cater to the emotional needs of their clientele. The work takes Dex from town to town, meeting new people as they go but Dex finds that it isn't fulfilling enough. The faces might change and the backdrop may alter but it's essentially the same damn thing every damn day. And who can't relate to this?

So Dex decides to take some "me time" and heads off to the wilderness on a camping trip, which is where we (finally!) meet Mosscap, a robot who has been sent to check up on humanity. Well, this is exciting for us readers but Dex is perplexed. They wanted something new, but most of all they wanted some time alone.

Reluctantly, Dex agrees to travel with Mosscap and the pair share information about each other and their respective social environments. A fascinating discussion ensues in which both parties dispel prior misconceptions and in the process make a few nice phrases that are quotable, such as this one:

“Everybody thinks they’re the exception to the rule, and that’s exactly where the trouble starts. One person can do a lot of damage.”

And this one:

"human constructs are carved out and overlaid ... these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around."

Counter-intuitively the robot having lived in the wild knows much more about nature than Dex does. The way this story is set up it's almost like the robot is our chance to Dr. Dolittle with the animals.

I wanted to mention that in this story the monks are polytheistic, but I had nothing else to add to it and wasn't sure where it would fit. So here it is, from outta nowhere, just a statement with some superfluous words around it. I didn't take in what any of the Gods were named or what their specific dominions were but polytheisms are generally more fun than mono ones.

There is some discourse on the experience of depression too which is fairly relatable.

"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?”

However, shortly after I began to notice that every different topic they discussed was loaded to make a point, even agreeing with the sentiment of each point I felt it took something natural away from the development of their relationship and ultimately the storytelling.

Well the conversation was pretty delightful anyway and at 2.5 hours to read I'm certainly prepared to invest the time in the next cosy story. This did not amaze me like it has for many other readers but it was very nice. I was "umm"ing and "ahh"ing on whether to give this 3 or 4 of GR's highly coveted stars because not a lot of anything happens but it was a very nice read overall.

“I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.”

Two quick and irrelevant bits of trivia for ye and then I'm done...

First, because my local library sucks on representing scifi, when I searched Becky Chambers I got exactly one result for a book on Homoeopathy and whole body vibration. What. The. Fuck. So I freaked out and did a teensy bit of Googling and discovered that these books are not written by the same person. Phew!

Second, as a Trekkie it was a challenge to write Dex so many times and not accidentally slip up and write Dax which comes so naturally instead.

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