Beautiful, gently funny, and thought-expanding solar sci-fi. Becky Chambers has never missed for me, and I can't wait for future installments of Monk & Robot!

A Psalm for the Wild-Build is an upcoming sci-fi novel by Becky Chambers and is the 1st installment in the Monk & Robot series.

First and foremost, thank you NetGalley and Tor Books for providing me with a copy for review.

While I wouldn't say my experience with this book was bad, I felt mostly underwhelmed. Maybe it is because of the length of the book, or maybe it is simply because I personally don't find the author's stories to be particularly intriguing.

One of the big fallouts for me was the fact that this read like a contemporary with sci-fi elements. While that might not be a bad thing, I am not someone who gravitates towards contemporary stories. The story was also a bit choppy as it didn't flow well when moving onto a new chapter.

In terms of the overall story, it felt very much so like a long philosophical debate about the meaning of life and freedom. Again, while the story could be rather insightful to a lot of people, I just did not make a connection with it nor with the characters.

I liked that Dex uses gender-neutral pronouns as it is not something that I have seen yet in the books I have been reading, but otherwise her character did nothing for me. I did like Mosscap, but he reminded me a bit of C3P0 and the relation did bother me a bit as I felt like I wasn't reading about an entirely original character (even though there is only so much you can do when it comes to robots). The relationship between Dex and Mosscap also did nothing for me as I was not able to feel their connection due to the short length of the book.

So, overall, this was a solid 'meh' book. Nothing necessarily bad but nothing about it really captured and held my interest and attention. This does mainly come down to personal preferences though as the tone of the book just didn't work for me and I like my books to have more substance and action.

I would still advise that you give this a shot if you are a fan of the author's other works. If you are looking for something a bit different but along the same vein, I would suggest trying out the manga Mushishi. It is a supernatural/slice of life manga that follows Ginko on his travels to aid people suffering from creatures known Mushi.

I loved this short, cozy, sci-fi fable that reminded me of The Alchemist. I appreciated the fact that, while the world-building was steady and authentic, it also was not overwhelming. You were simply dropped in to the story, and learned as you went along. This is a deceptively simple meditation on what humans need, what our "purpose" is, and what it means to be a conscious creature in the world. I am eager for the next volume!

Many thanks to #NetGalley for a review copy.

Becky Chambers is a genius. A beautiful, meditative reflection on life, purpose, and what those things mean (or don't) -- through the lens of a nonbinary tea monk and a "wild-built" robot.

This book is about consciousness, and meaning, and ecological balance, and agency. Or it’s about a monk, and a robot, on a trek. This book is full of philosophy and wisdom and heart, and I couldn’t put it down.
I’m ride or die for Becky Chambers, but I didn’t expect this book to hit the way it did, and I can’t wait to throw it at everyone. Seriously how are they so brilliant!!
I love how this feels and fits so squarely within science fictional tropes and tradition but with enough whimsy and a dash of Pratchett-like vulnerability - and a grace that’s all Chambers’s.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I love a good story about robots and humans, and the love they and we can share for each other, and of course, tea, and philosophy, and humanization, and not making humanity to be the pinnacle of existence, and personhood.

I don't think anyone will be surprised that I loved this book.

Ahhh, this is really a perfect book to me. It's an easy read -- not because the feelings or concepts are simple, but because it is a book that wants to gently lead you through its ideas and its premise. The characters are incredible, the narrative is great (I love the mix of high and low speech in the narrative), and it's just... it's so soothing. This is going to become a comfort read I return to time and time again.

Another charming title from Becky Chambers. I really enjoyed the story and hope to follow monk & robot on more adventures. I t was a quick read and really needed as my life right now has been a bit stressful. This book was perfect to bring me back to center.

Becky Chambers book are chicken soup in print form. I am in awe of her ability to create so many different characters that I love in every single thing she writes. This is a slice of life sci-fi that we're coming to expect from Chambers. No big plot, but big characters and ideas in a beautiful version of the future.

I loved, loved, love Dex's discomfort with not being able to offer Mosscap food, especially the line about Dex's mother being pissed off somewhere. The ending was perfect, and though I knew Mosscap offering the tea to Dex was coming, that scene was brilliance.

I'm beyond thrilled this is listed at a first book on Goodreads because this beautiful, quiet little series if something I want a dozen more of.

We all need this book right now. A Psalm for the Wild- Built is a comforting story that lets you escape for a while into a hopeful future paved by human compassion. Science fiction collides with self-discovery and wilderness expedition with two vibrant, though unlikely paired, characters: a tea monk and a nature-loving robot. Their journey is philosophical as well as physical, full of conversations about purpose, meaning, and human nature. It left me reflecting on my own relationship with those things, but with a profound sense of optimism about it all! I found some peace reading this book, and you will too.

I was so sad when I was halfway through this story. The good thing is going to be a series.

Panga is a world where people have become a better species and have found harmony with their environment. Therefore, when the robots gained sentience, they got their own territory and disappeared into the wilderness.

Sibling Dex is going through a life crisis where they feel as though their life has no meaning. First, they try to fill this hole by becoming a tea monk. This job is going to a village, listening to someone's problems and giving them tea and a place to sit to feel better. I really wish this was a thing that we have. Second, after becoming a successful tea monk but still having that hole, they decide to go to the wilderness in the robot territory to find an abandoned temple. When they enter the wilderness, they encounter Mosscap, a robot who wants to meet humans.

This novella felt as warm as that tea Dex gives out. Mosscap is very caring and patient. Its lectures regarding nature and managing the expectations of your life were so healing and needed to be written. I felt a yearning for this place to exist.

Review based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

I'm truly in awe of Becky Chambers. This novella was thought provoking and beautiful. It was the perfect blend of nature and science. The world of Panga was lush, sustainable, and full of kindness. I would live there in a heartbeat and I honestly hope our world will look something like this one day.

I fell in love with Mosscap instantly and appreciated that none of the typical robot tropes were used in this story. It took me a little bit to warm up to Sibling Dex, but they ended up being a deeply relatable character. As always, the casual queer rep was beautifully done. If you haven't read anything by Becky Chambers yet, this is a great place to start. If you are already a fan, you will love this.

I’ve always heard great things about Becky Chambers, but I’ve never read one of her books before. This one didn’t disappoint. It’s a lovely, beautifully written, touching little novella.

It takes place in a post-apocalyptic-type future, although it doesn’t seem like the inciting event to change society was anything horrible, so I’m hesitant to even call it post-apocalyptic. At some point in the distant past, all the robots became sentient, but rather than wanting to dominate civilization, they kind of just wanted to leave it altogether and go chill in nature. As a result, humans became less reliant on automation and society turned a little more agrarian, and robots became a thing of legend. Sibling Dex, a monk dedicated to the God of Small Comforts who travels the countryside offering cups of tea and a friendly ear, becomes restless in their job and ventures into the wilderness, only to run across a robot whose mission is to understand humans.

I love the slowly building friendship and understanding between Sibling Dex and Mosscap – both of whom are agender, with Dex using they/them pronouns and Mosscap using it/its pronouns, as it seems robots identify as things and not people. I also love the very idea of the God of Small Comforts, and the idea that “tea monk” could be a job, one which provides a much-sought-after service. The book is very slow-paced and introspective, so if you’re looking for something plot-driven, you’re not going to find it. But I found the pace and tone, with the lovely writing style and immersive setting, to be very comforting, much like a nice cup of tea. It’s a type of laid-back slice-of-life that I feel is not often explored in genre fiction, and I really appreciate it.

Such a fun and interesting concept. It’s really hard to give any more detail than the synopsis without spoiling anything. I enjoyed this one a ton!

In A Psalm for the Wild Built, Chambers has imagined a future that learned from the mistakes of its industrial past. Humanity has striven to mend its previously harmful relationship with nature and technology. Large swaths of land have been set aside to be reclaimed by nature and robots that originally ran large Factories have been given autonomy, free to form their own society away from humans. When Sibling Dex leaves everything they know behind to seek meaning in the wilderness they stumble into one such robot named Mosscap, making them the first human to have contact with robots in 200 years.
There is something about Becky Chamber’s writing that leaves you feeling soft, warm, and thoughtful. She has a way of approaching heavy ideas with a lightness and optimism that is uniquely hers and this book showcases it well. She's created a unique world with interesting characters and new dynamics I'm looking forward to exploring more in the sequels.

This is going to wind up on sci-fi lists because there's a robot character, but otherwise the story is very unmoored. Is it a future timeline? an alternate reality? It doesn't really matter. The society's backstory is given only in broad strokes-- there were a lot of factories and general industrialization, the robots gained sentience, and the people adapted to a more hand-crafted, solar, highly sustainable culture. It's set on the moon of a planet that's not around here, but how the people got there and why they went aren't relevant to the story.

A bit like To Be Taught, If Fortunate, the story feels very short, like big sections are purposefully not included. I like getting nitty-gritty day -to-day detail, but the zoomed out wide-angle storytelling makes the story feel more philosophical. A worthwhile consideration for book clubs, and definitely for people who don't want sci-fi because it's all space battles. This has a bit of the philosophy that was disappointingly missing in Klara and the Sun and would be a good "while you're waiting" suggestion if you library still has long holds lists.

Becky Chambers continues to destroy me and is making herself my favourite author. How does she write such perfect stories? I’ll be honest, when I heard the premise of Psalm for the Wild-Built I was hesitant, I wanted more Wayfarers stories, but this is incredible.

Centuries into the future, society has collapsed, the machines have walked themselves into the wilderness and society has restarted without them. We follow a tea monk as they seek...*something* and head off, alone, into the woods. But it’s Chambers so this is about what it means to be human and it is wholesome and beautiful and will make you cry. It’s a love letter to humanity, to consciousness, to tea, to exploration.

Favourite quote: “Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing?”

Please please pick this up when it’s out! Thanks to netgalley and tordotcom for the ebook!!

A highly imaginative tale with comforting insights into being human

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers introduces the reader to the planet Panga, where humans and robots have voluntarily had no contact for centuries. Monk Sibling Dex, who serves Allalae, the God of Small Comforts, is on a mission to learn about nature as it exists without humans. He meets up with robot Splendid Speckled Mosscap ( Robots take the name of the first thing they see when they wake to life, which in his case was a mushroom.), whose quest is to learn about human nature and what people need. So naturally the two undertake their travels together. And, of course, rather than meeting other humans or observing nature, they end up in abandoned buildings. Needless to say, their quests succeed, through major heroic activities like dicing onions and offering food. Their conclusions are hopeful for them and for us, the readers.

Despite my thorough delight in A Psalm for the Wild-Built there are two elements that may cause some readers not to persist in their reading. The book starts out at a leisurely pace, so leisurely that if I had not felt an obligation to provide a review I might have stopped reading before Dex meets Mosscap, one-third of the way through the book. If your reaction is the same do NOT give up. The rest of the book definitely is worth the slog. A second item that will put off some readers is Becky Chambers’ use of “they/their” as a gender-free pronoun. I like the idea of such a pronoun, but “they” already has a plural meaning, and it is confusing when it applies only to one person, especially when Dex and Mosscap are together, and Chambers uses “they” to refer only to Dex. This is not a fatal flaw, but it pulled me out of the wonderful atmosphere of the book more than once as my analytic brain processed the word usage.

There is not a single epic battle or other major event of the sort dear to many science fiction fans, but if you want a highly imaginative book that leaves you with a smile on your face and gives some thoughtful philosophical musings about the purpose of your own life, then I highly recommend A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

I received an advance review copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher.

Becky Chambers writes another delightful, quick read that is somehow still able to bring up deep ideas on what it means to exist with other beings in the world - and yourself. Through character dialogue she adeptly walks us through important philosophical ideas about our purpose and if that matters in the end.

This novella features Dex, a monk, who sets off on a journey to find a purpose that will satisfy them and they are living a meaningful life. On this internal and physical journey, they meet that they never expected to meet, a robot. A robot on a quest of its own - to find out what humans need - something so personal and not easily answered.

I love this book so so so much. As usual for Chambers' books, this is entirely character driven and it's incredibly relatable, with the question of what it means to have a purpose in your life. It's also beautifully written. The world, is really interesting and I just wanted to learn more about.. The story is somehow simultaneously just so peaceful, cathartic, heart-wrenching, and hopeful, and filled with love. I really enjoyed both the interiority Dex' journey as well and all their conversations with the robot. I wish there was more and I can't wait for book two. I loved this - highly recommend!!

Thank you so much to tordotcompub for gifting me a e-arc of this book!

IG - @ps.readsmore

I’ve only read one book by Becky Chambers before - To be Taught, if Fortunate - which was interesting and contemplative, so I decided to pick this new story be her, also because I have really come to appreciate the novella format. And this was just…. something !!!!

I won’t by any means call this a perfect book, but it was utterly perfect for me. Just like her previous book, the writing in this is also very calm, quiet, soothing, requiring a bit of introspection from the reader and also thought provoking. It may not be everyone’s speed but this slice of life story is just right if you are in the mood for it. Bex is a character whom I related to so much, because of the way they felt about their life and their struggles felt so familiar. The way they try to be a good listener to everyone and help others feel a bit better through their words, but is ultimately unable to feel better themselves - it just hit me too hard and I couldn’t stop reading because I badly wanted to know how they would ultimately come to terms with their feelings. And then entered Mosscap, a robot, and I can’t tell you how fascinating it is to listen to a human created object essentially give a philosophical sermon about life to a monk. But these life lessons about the meaning of purpose, and if it is really essential for a human being to have purpose to feel fulfilled and lead a meaningful life - is a question that is explored thoughtfully and I really appreciated that, because it is something I’m always thinking about. There may not be complete answers to these questions, but there’s enough thoughts to ponder about.

In the end, I don’t know whom to recommend this book to because it feels too personal to me. But I guess like what the author says in the dedication, pick this book up if you need a break from life. And in these times full of anxieties, not just about the pandemic but so many other issues, this short novella might just provide you some respite.