They may not be surrounded by city landscapes but frogs don’t make the same sounds as crickets. As things start to settle down, Dex realises that the reason they left the city is still unfulfilled. Being a tea monk is an art and the creativity of the craft is expressed beautifully in A Psalm for the Wild Built. Slowly, they go from knowing next to nothing about the craft to being someone whose visits to the villages are looked forward to. On their travels outside of the city, Dex becomes an amazing tea monk. What will it be like to do something that they have never done before? Dex could go back to the safety of the life they know but their heart calls for adventures and there is no better time to follow. But they want to get out of the city and try something new. The society of Panga allows for everyone to choose and learn whichever vocation they want so Dex decides to become a tea-monk, a travelling monk who goes from village to village, bringing tea to the people.ĭex has been a garden monk all their life and they are past the age of an apprentice, at twenty-nine, they are not that young anymore. They have lived in the city all their life but they have been feeling this urge to be in nature, to listen to the sound of crickets. The beginning chapters of A Psalm for the Wild-Built focus on a human, Dex. This is such a beautiful and unexpected idea that I had not explored until I read this book. Something artificial wants to explore something wild. I love the idea that robots were constructs that Awakened and left to live in the wilderness so that “we may observe that which has no design – the untouched wilderness,” said Floor-AB # 921 as it declined the invitation, on behalf of all robots, to join the human society. I was mesmerised by the writing and the world from the very start.

Recommended to me by Lauren and Ariel, A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a thought provoking story set on a moon called Panga. Chambers’ series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter? But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. By Becky Chambers | Goodreads | Monk and Robot #1Ĭenturies before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again.

A psalm for the wild