Book Review: A Psalm For The Wild-Built

I tried to write this without spoiling the book :)

I recently read Becky Chambers' "A Psalm For The Wild-Built" and loved it. It's
a work of utopian science fiction: an industrialized society, much like ours,
has all of the robots that labor for it spontaneously lay down their tools and
wander en masse into the wilderness. This causes a huge and radical shift away
from manufacturing and consumption and towards growing and balance. Hundreds of
years later, the robots have faded into history, but the changes to society have
endured.

The story follows Dex, a genderless person who works as a tea monk, travelling
the countryside and offering people tea and a listening ear. Dex is the first
human to make contact with a robot in hundreds of years, and the robot has
returned to human society with one simple question: "what do people need?"

The book explores the many, many answers to that question, as well as the ideas
of meaning in life, purpose or lack thereof, and what it means to be actually
free to make choices. This happens against the backdrop of a beautiful,
sustainable, and harmonious society, which adds an interesting layer to it:
everyone's physical needs are already met! One of the central conflicts of the
book is actually why Dex doesn't feel content even though they seem to have a
perfect life in a perfect place, from our current perspective.

It's hard not to come away from the book envious of Dex, even though they
struggle, just because the world they live in is manifestly better than ours in
so many ways, and so much better in tune with the natural world around them. In
that sense, this book is utopian - an illustration of what could be, perhaps,
since the people are all humans, just humans who think differently than we do. I
found the story thoroughly heartwarming in that way, and I really want to read
more in the same setting. I definitely recommend this book to folks feeling
weary with their current life or the world around them, or to anyone who just
wants a glimpse of something better.

I got the book here:

=> https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250236210/apsalmforthewildbuilt

Kobo sells DRM-free epubs of it, so I recommend that if you can.

Enjoy!