A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
November 6, 2022 4:01 AM - Subscribe

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
posted by Literaryhero (8 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's a short book, but I loved it. I actually tried to read it as slowly as possible to drag it out, but that didn't work. Basically if you like Becky Chambers, and you liked the first Monk and Robot book you will like this.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:02 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


That's about all the recommendation I need. A Psalm for the Wild-Built was a great little read.
posted by heteronym at 5:34 AM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


Oh gosh, I can't believe I didn't post this, thank you for putting it up! I added the "monkandrobot" tag to the previous book so they'll both come up.

I loved this too, I've been meaning to re-read it (already!) so will be back with some more thoughts soon. :)
posted by curious nu at 4:13 PM on November 6, 2022


This book made me cry on a plane, glad tears.
posted by potrzebie at 6:49 PM on November 6, 2022


This book made me cry on a plane, glad tears.

Yeah the end is really something. A gut punch, but in a good way? Is that a thing?
posted by Literaryhero at 7:23 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


Such a good book. As a follow-up to Psalm... it felt seamless, and continues the amazing and beautiful world-building. Taken together, the books are quite the meditation. We need more sci-fi like this.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:07 PM on November 6, 2022


I loved this book (and the previous one) a lot. Did it recently get featured somewhere or something? I've heard multiple other people in my social circle talking about it in the past couple weeks, but I read it over the summer at the waterpark while my kid splashed around.

Based on my enjoyment of these, I moved on to the Wayfarers series, which is a different vibe but also very good - it's got that classic pulp sci-fi flavor without any nasty misogynistic/racist/heteronormative aftertastes. I very much appreciate stories about possible non-doomy futures right now.
posted by jordemort at 10:26 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


So, yes, I really like these books! Rereading this was exactly what I needed. I like the jumping from scene to scene, staying in a place just long enough to explore an idea and then not overstaying the welcome. The developing friendship feels earned. A gentle philosophical dialogue in a world that might be.

Dex's mid(?)-life crisis is easy to empathize with, as well as that general yearning for purpose, of having reasonable expectations and empathy for others that you don't give yourself, and having to reckon with when you are just absolutely burnt out and need to stop doing things for awhile. From the afterword, Chambers wrote this one all during COVID, and I don't know how much of that one can directly attribute to this narrative but it sure hits me different now than it would've five years ago.

I like that it's never a road or a plastic, but it's always oil road, or oil plastic (or other plastics when that bit comes up). A reminder of what the old world was built on without glossing over it, and that you can make these things out of other materials too.
posted by curious nu at 3:38 PM on November 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


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