This book was bought for me by a friend of mine last year as she thought it was something I’d quite like – it turns out, she was absolutely right. A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a story about a monk and a robot who become friends – and that’s essentially it, but I feel like it also provides a wonderful perspective on the world.
Dex, a monk, finds that they are increasingly unfulfilled with their life in the city, as they feel disconnected from nature, and so they head out into the countryside in order to literally “touch grass” as people say, and reconnect with the world. Once they reach a more rural locale, they adopt a cosy lifestyle, travelling around and serving tea to people as part of a religious practise, but still they don’t quite feel comfortable and content with their life.
This is when they meet Mosscap, a robot. This is quite significant in the context of its world, because within the setting, robots have not interacted with human beings for generations. After they collectively gained sentience, they decided that they no longer wanted to live amongst humans and their artificial constructs, and instead chose to live in the wilderness, as they’d never really been exposed to the nature before. I loved this concept and thought it was a wonderfully unique approach to artificial intelligence.
Dex is a somewhat cynical person and struggles to find a sense of purpose in life. Mosscap, on the other hand, seems to be completely at peace and accepts its place in the universe (‘it’ by the way, is Mosscap’s preferred pronoun, and is unperturbed by the idea that it is a ‘thing’) and while Dex is initially irritated by its presence, over time, a bond grows between them and it’s a journey I was glad to be along for.
It’s a cosy, low-stakes novel about a person learning to become more comfortable with themselves. I won’t spoil how it ends, but Dex’s revelations are the kinds of things that I feel like would help quite a lot of people I know, or at least help them feel valdated. I also really appreciated its perspective on humanity’s position in the natural world, as I thought it was very comforting and agreeable. It was very different to any other sci-fi novel I’ve read before, but in the best of ways. Its optimism and positive values are particularly refreshing in the modern state of the world.
Rating: 8.9/10
