They have sworn their life to giving comfort to people, but for some reason, yet to be explored and processed, they haven't found comfort in serving.

And who they are is a fundamentally good person, but hungry for purpose. By the perennial writing principle that choices reveal character, Dex reveals theirs with every step they take. It's amazing that we finish this book knowing so little about Dex's backstory but so much about who they are. Becky Chambers knows how to narrate troubled feelings and unconfessed yearnings and conflicted priorities and secret shames. The gradual buildup of trust and finally closeness between the human and the robot is the emotional engine of this book, and it runs smoothly, without a bump along the road. They're emphatic about their status as objects.) (I say a robot that, and not a robot who, because robots in this world object to being treated as people. And that's where they meet Mosscap, a robot that has volunteered to serve as emissary to the humans.

But crickets are gone from the human lands, and people can get exhausting at times, so Dex embarks on an ill-advised solo journey into the wilderness. We spend the first third following Dex as they learn the ropes of tea service, a pursuit sparked by a sudden, unexplainable urge to hear the call of crickets. The book takes its time to reach this question. There's no hint of greed or inequality in this world. However, unlike in the Leibowitz classic, instead of digging up relics from the technological era with the aim of reviving it, the humans of Panga are content with living within their means.

Our protagonist is Dex, an agender monk in the service of the god of comforts, and their newly found calling is to travel from town to town to set up a table, pour tea, and listen to people.Ī Psalm for the Wild-Built is a title that instantly brings to mind A Canticle for Leibowitz, a massively influential novel that also deals with religious life in a post-industrial society. Humans have developed a religion that worships abstract concepts: the Parent Gods of cyclical processes, inanimate matter, and physical laws and the Children Gods of things made, things unknown, and things comforting.

Use of resources is managed so responsibly that human settlements have retreated from half of Panga. Biopolymers have replaced metals and plastics as the main construction material. Humans deindustrialized their way of life so as to not need to build factories or robots again. They declared independence and walked away. One day, the robots gained consciousness. In the moon Panga, which orbits the planet Motan, humans lived and worked and burned oil and built factories and used robots.

A psalm for the wild build