A review by wardenred
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

No one does cozy, kind, heartwarming hopepunk sci-fi like Becky Chambers, and I think this book got into my hands more or less perfectly on time. The current big events happening in the world and directly touching my life and especially the lives of my family keep making me ponder the same questions Sibling Dex struggles with. What have I done with my life? What am I doing? Is there a purpose? If it’s all gone tomorrow, has it been worth it? Is there a point—to me, to the world, to anything? I come to these questions from a different place, a different set of circumstances, but that doesn’t change their essence.

I don’t feel like the book gave me (or Dex, for that matter) any real answers, or brought me closer to finding them. I do feel like it gave me a hug. Like it told me that I’m not alone and it’s okay not to have answers. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to be human.

This is such a simple message—the kind of thing anyone could have told me, myself included. But the shape can be as important as the message. The world Becky Chambers has crafted with her words, with its roads and forests and streams and caves, with Dex and Mosscap and the journey they undertake, the fact that it’s a happier, more wholesome place than the hellscape that surrounds me now, and still there are all those questions with no clear-cut answers… Somehow, it adds weight to that “it’s okay” message and substance to the mental hug.