Title: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy: A Monk and Robot Book

Author: Becky Chambers

Completed: July 2023 (Full list of books)

Overview: I read the first in this series, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, last year and really enjoyed it. This is the second one and it came out shortly after I finished the first. Again, the author builds such an amazing world, I’m ready to move there. She brings up interesting philosophical questions that are fun to think about, but mostly I just want to sit down in these places and hang out the the characters.

Highlights:

• “Nobody should be barred from necessities or comforts just because they don’t have the right number next to their name.”
• A river-build, as it happened, was whatever its creator wanted to make out of whatever they had on hand.
• “On the contrary, our way of life shows you how comfortable the world is on its own. Paring things down makes the small comforts all the sweeter. You don’t know how to be grateful for a well-sealed wall if you haven’t had a winter storm bust through a weak one. You don’t know how sweet strawberries are unless you’ve waited six months for them to fruit. Elsewhere, they have all these little luxuries, but they don’t understand that food and shelter and company are all you really need.
• You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be.
• “All parasites have value, Sibling Dex. Not to their hosts, perhaps, but you could say the same about a predator and a prey animal. They all give back—not to the individual but to the ecosystem at large. Wasps are tremendously important pollinators. Birds and fish eat bloodsucks.”