A Psalm for the Wild-Built

This is exactly what I needed to read at this point in my life. It's so beautiful, and I cried my way through the entire second half. Perhaps it isn't anything groundbreaking, but it has the same "vibes" as a Studio Ghibli film or the video game, Celeste. It's no wonder that this book is so loved.

Kirjan maailmassa ihmiset elävät vehreissä kestävän teknologian kaupungeissa ja puolet planeetasta (tai siis kuusta) on rauhoitettu ihmiskunnalta. Ihmiskunnan muinoin rakentamat ja sitten omille teilleen lähteneet robotit ovat jo melkein unohdettua historiaa. Päähenkilö, kiertävänä "teemunkkina" toimiva Dex, lähtee etsimään merkityksen tunnetta ja törmää robottiin, joka on lähtenyt tutustumaan ihmisten yhteiskuntaan.

Eli siis jonkinlaista tekno-optimistista ja utopistista skifiä on tämä lyhytromaani. Mulle melko uutta "solarpunk"-termiä on myös käytetty teosta kuvaamaan. Ihan kivasti kirjoitettu ja sympaattinen tarina elämän merkityksen etsimisestä, jotenkin liiankin kiva ja mukava. Ehkä kaipaan skifiltäni enemmän konfliktia ja säröä.

What a joy this book was! It's a fairly light adventure, but with an emotional journey, some relatable characters, and a setting that feels like a relatively positive future with some unspecified dark times in its past.

This was the #SFFBookClub April pick

sweet, beautiful, simple and short. this story came to me on the heels of a hard year, which itself was following a couple more hard years. sibling dex and mosscap were precisely the guides i needed to recenter at the end of this year and think about how to bring a little bit of tea monk energy into the next chapters of my life. i'll be rereading this one.

Becky Chamber's works are rare among science fiction stories because instead of action-adventure plots they're about people talking about what it means to be alive.

The first couple of chapters felt like the plot was jumping around a hell of a lot, because they're really just backstory/preamble for the actual story

It's good that there will be a sequel because I do want to know what both Mosscap and Dex will do next

A gorgeous poke at a plausible, palpable, provocative world. Also: a timely addition to the "sad-happy speculative fiction" corpus.