Monk and Robot Series
Book One: A Psalm for the Wild Built
★★★★★
This incredibly tender book is the first in Becky Chambers’s newish sci-fi series, Monk and Robot. It is thick with longing for discernment, purpose, and meaning, and it gently suggests that we hold these desires more lightly. The theme comes to life as a quest in a world where robots are wild and humans have hope of being more than brutal extractors. I cried through the final scene. Just beautiful.
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“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”
Book Two: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
★★★★½
Book 2 in the Monk and Robot series develops the friendship and adventures of Dex (Monk) and Mosscap (Robot). Like Book One, it uses tender prose and gentle pacing to create a reading experience that feels like sanctuary. I love how Chambers advances slow-burning tension in a peaceful world where nearly all conflict is inner conflict. It’s a interesting narrative challenge, and not many writers could pull it off. This special magic opened me to consider subtler questions of what it means to be alive. Book Three of this series can’t come soon enough for me.
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“The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place.”