Imagine. You wake up one morning after a long sleep. Birdsong fills the morning air, and the sun warms your skin through the windows just right. After getting ready, you sit down with a nice cup of tea and breathe in the aroma. Everything seems how it should be, so you think, “Dammit all! I just want to hear some fucking crickets! Is that too much to ask?”
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is about a monk, Sibling Dex, who leaves their current assignment because they damn well felt like it. They had a nagging thought in the back of their mind that wouldn’t go away. Crickets. Were there any crickets left in this future where the wild and civilization seemingly intertwine? Of course, seemingly is the operative word here. Dex decides they want to hear crickets, which can’t happen in the City. How about the rural areas? Perhaps. They settle on becoming a tea monk. Can’t be hard, listening to other people talk and making them a cup of tea.
Providing a comforting, cozy environment and understanding people’s needs….well, it’s not easy.
Dex is an incredibly diligent worker but is always on the move, never relaxing. Not really. Their worldview shatters when they meet Mosscap, a robot who appears straight out of the wild. The real wild. Not that manicured, carefully cultivated place. Mosscap accompanies Dex because it’s curious about humans and wants to learn more about them. It appears quite charming and novel at first but quickly becomes a bit of a nuisance. Its questions seem pointless. Of course we don’t eat the skin of an onion. Would you stop asking so many questions? But then you realize that Mosscap’s questions are only annoying because they make you think and consider things you didn’t want to think and consider.
Oh sorry, we were talking about Dex. Yes, they just want to hear crickets and then….I don’t know. The burning question looming behind this book is “What’s the purpose?” Dex is constantly searching for a purpose for everything. Everything has a purpose. So what’s their purpose? This book is short and starts off a bit on the slow side, but it asks a lot of questions and makes quite an impact. It’s a cup of tea you need at the moment, even if you don’t realize it yet yourself.
(We received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
Buy the book, released July 13, 2021: BookShop | Macmillan | Misc)
