A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
I think I only have one Becky Chambers book left to read, and then I’ll have to wait for her to come back from the hiatus she’s currently on. I enjoyed both of the Monk and Robot books, though for some reason they don’t seem to be quite sticking with me the way the Wayfarers books did. Both novellas follow monk Dex and robot Mosscap and are mostly about their relationship with each other. In Psalm for the Wild-Built, Dex, a monk of the god of small comforts, is feeling unsatisfied and decides to become a tea monk and travel around the moon they live on. They offer tea and comfort to citizens in the various towns they go through. They enjoy their job, but eventually it, too, becomes unsatisfying, and they aren’t sure why. They decide to make a trek through the wilderness to an old hermitage, and along the way they meet Mosscap. Robots spontaneously gained consciousness and left civilization a couple centuries before, and this is the first contact between humans and robots since then.
Mosscap has essentially been assigned to check on humans and find out what they need, starting with asking what Dex needs, but Dex doesn’t know what they’re looking for. The first book ends with them at the hermitage. The next one picks up with them on the road to a town because Mosscap is going to start asking everyone else what they need. That’s not really what the books is about, though. That’s what it’s apparently supposed to be about, but we don’t get to see Mosscap ask very many people that question. Instead the focus is largely on Dex’s needs (and they still haven’t figured out what they need) and on Dex’s and Mosscap’s relationship.
I loved that developing relationship. Mosscap’s excitement about everything new is really entertaining, though it can be vexing for Dex, especially when it means stopping for several minutes so Mosscap can look at yet another tree. They also have philosophical discussions about purpose and personhood. Dex is lost, and Mosscap’s questions help them start to gain some clarity.
Becky Chambers is great at world-building, as she demonstrated in her Wayfarers series, though as with that series, these novellas are character-driven, so the world-building is somewhat limited. We don’t know why humans are on the moon they live on or how they transitioned from the Factory Age that created the robots to the more eco-friendly life they live now, and that’s ok. All of the elements that Chambers does include are interesting, and I love seeing the examples of how humanity is treating nature. It’s certainly a much more enlightened way than we do now. I really hope that once Chambers comes back from hiatus, her next book is another Monk and Robot book.
A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
Louise Penny is skilled at creating well-rounded characters. People aren’t all good or all bad, even the bad guys. So she alludes to some aspects of murder victim CC de Poitiers’s childhood that probably helped shaped the awful woman she is as an adult. I could recognize that and have empathy for child CC. That said, I couldn’t wait for adult CC to die. It took several chapters, and I kept waiting, because boy is she terrible. She’s rude and cruel to everyone, including her daughter, and I felt so bad for her daughter.
Of course, I still wanted the mystery to unfold and to find out who had done it and why. I’m not particularly good at figuring out “whodunit” in mystery books, but I had a feeling about this one from the beginning, though I was hoping I was wrong. I enjoyed seeing Inspector Gamache explore suspects and motives. I really like him as a character. He’s very skilled at figuring out how to interact with people in a way most likely to get them to cooperate, which is different for everyone.
It was nice to revisit some of the characters from Still Life, like Clara and Myrna, and we meet new characters as well. Agent Nichol returns, and there’s clearly an overarching story about Inspector Gamache that is likely to continue to play out over future novels. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. It seems very conspiracy-like, whereas the mysteries themselves are a little bit more cozy-esque. There is continuing fatphobia, which I don’t like. It’s hard to tell if it’s coming from the author or the characters, but it feels like it’s coming from the author. While Penny at least isn’t equating fatness with evil or other negative character traits (some of the well-liked characters are larger-bodied), she focuses negatively on weight in a way that she doesn’t focus on with other physical features. It’s not likely to keep me from reading more of the series, but I do notice it.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
CW: suicide
Nora Seed is 35 and doesn’t have much going for her in life. Her parents are dead, her brother doesn’t talk to her, she doesn’t have many friends, her cat died, and she’s just lost her dead-end job. She decides to take her life and is surprised to wake up in a library of infinite books, a place between life and death. The librarian – Mrs. Elm, who was her high school librarian – tells Nora that each of these books contains a life Nora could have led. The books contain all of life’s possibilities, essentially a parallel life for every decision she could have made. What would have happened if she had gone for a Masters in philosophy? What would have happened if she had decided to marry her ex-fiance Dan?
Nora has the opportunity to try on any of these lives that she wants, and if she finds one that fits, she will stay in it, and eventually all memory of her previous life and the library itself will fade. Nora takes advantage of this, trying life after life after life, and each time returning to the library after minutes, days, or weeks (though time doesn’t pass in the library) because the life became disappointing.
Some have called the novel predictable, but I don’t think Matt Haig intended for the ending to be a surprise. I knew, or at least expected, where Nora would end up. The book is about seeing how she gets there. It does get a little preachy at the end, though. I attribute this, perhaps falsely or unfairly, to Haig’s own mental health history. That said, I do like how mental health is treated in the book. Nora appears to have a history of depression, and it shows up in a lot of her lives. Haig doesn’t pretend that there’s any kind of quick fix for it, though he perhaps starts to lean in that direction during the preachy section at the end, but even that could simply be a reflection of Nora’s hope. Overall, I liked the book and might check out more of Haig’s fiction.