Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a gentle book about a monk who tries their hand at being a tea monk, traveling to communities and offering tea and consolation. Then they feel like they need something more and so travels into the wilderness to find a long-lost sanctuary and along the way meets up with a robot. Which is significant only because robots and humans have gone their separate ways for centuries. Now together they explore what it means to have purpose, how to comfort and communicate with each other, how we pass on our legacies (and if that should matter). It is a book of ideas although the story moves along at a consistent, if unhurried pace with no major conflicts or suspense. It's just the perfect companion to a nice cup of tea and some meditation on the meaning of life.

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traveling the quiet highways between Panga's villages was no longer a matter of mental mapping but of sensory input.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing.  Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodentia panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders' hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another.

Its only legacy was to persist where it did not belong.