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A Psalm for the Wild-Built (EBook, 2021, Tom Doherty Associates) 5 stars

It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; …

If you're willing to trade your email and are in the US and Canada, until tomorrow (end-of-day Eastern Time on May 6), you can trade your email at ebookclub.tor.com/ for a ebook collection that includes this novella. If you bounced off of Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, this is a great way to give Becky Chambers a second try, which I encourage folks to do! I've read all of her books, and Long Way is by far my least favorite.

This book is a totally new series set on some sort of future-Earth-analog, and the hopeful eco-solarpunk warm-cup-of-tea post-apocalypse world is a perspective I didn't know I was missing until I read it. Highly recommended, and if you hate it, hey, it's only 160 pages.

And speaking generally: I find Chambers' writing (especially after Long Way) to be hopeful and optimistic without being cloying or insubstantial, which is a hard balance to strike. In Wayfarers, her non-human societies/creatures (and there are a lot!) are fascinating on a personal level in a way that is missing from a lot that I read, and do an good job of not just being "humans with antennae".

And other than Long Way, Wayfarers are all totally independent, so you can pick up whichever strikes your fancy and pick up the others in whatever order you like. And you don't even have to read Long Way first - just avoid Closed and Common Orbit if you don't want a big character spoiler for Long Way, everything else is pretty loosely coupled.