Chambers does it again with her character-driven cozy science fiction. In this one, it's a tea monk who meets a robot (who've been separated for humans for 200 years, since they became sentient) while they're trying to pilgrimage to a monastery in the wilderness.
Yes, I said "tea monk." Luckily, PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT doesn't, in my mind, fall into the overly-tea-heavy spec fic of late (see: ANCILLARY JUSTICE ), because PSALM's protagonist is actually *employed* as a tea monk, which is a specific role in the society of the novel. If that matters to you.
Like all of Chambers's books, I liked the characters, and I was fine with the softness of the story arc---what climax there was was more internal, even meditative. There's a little too much, maybe, of philosophy dialectic disguised as dialog. But then, that's what philosophy's always been about, hasn't it?
🤖🤖🤖🤖_