A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Well, this one didn't work for me so much, but that's OK. I still adore Chambers. Maybe I just wasn't in the right head space, or maybe I'm not the target audience: this one felt aimed toward young teens, or at least someone who doesn't mind a slathering of Very Special Moral Lessons. If you've read Chambers you know her work is sweet; in this one she takes a giant leap into syrupy. Everyone—Monks, Robot, Villagers—is eye-rollingly nicey-nice and always striving to be nicey-nicer. This crotchety old man found it hard to relate.

It wasn't just the people and relationships: all of it required suspension of disbelief. The politics, economics, even physics (favorite yeah-right moment, referring to finding deadfall on an abandoned road: “Dex [...] shoved [...] swore [...] rolled the damn tree out of the way, and continued”). Dex manages to not only switch careers on a moment's notice, but also become world-class Best Listener in just two years. The robot construction and maintenance explanations border on nonsensical. The religion aspects are pretty clearly shoehorned in as a gimmick. In fact, writing this now, it feels more like the book was written by, not for, a young teen. It's handwaving wish-fulfillment porn. And that's okay, but Chambers can do better. Finally, the pronouns annoyed me. Dex is nonbinary, fine, but goes by “they,” and in third-person narration with two protagonists there are way, way too many doubletake moments: “they remained that way for a few minutes,” later followed by an indication that it was Dex-singular-they, followed by me having to reread the entire paragraph. Come on. You're a talented writer. Use xe. Make one up. Or, my favorite, use the Ann Leckie tactic where everyone is she and the reader never knows nor gives a damn about who has innie parts and who has outies.

I'm going to read the next book anyway though.