It was only after they’d spent years converting unfiltered sun into life-giving sugar that they began to expand horizontally, transforming into behemoths as the centuries drummed on.

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a 2022 solarpunk novella written by Becky Chambers and published by Tor. They wanted a cold drink and a shady spot and to not so much as glance at their ox-bike for a couple days, and while the spice blum blossoms were indeed beautiful, they did not need to stop at every single fucking tree. I think anyone who has ever suffered with any sort of mental health type thing will be familiar with deep alienation that accompanies it: it can very much feel like you live in a perfect world, surrounded by people who love you, and yet there is still something gracelessly, ungratefully wrong with you. However, while A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a notch below the previous book, it is still a commanding read.Perhaps this is an intentional feeling by Chambers: after all, people enter our lives, impact us, and then leave all the time. If this was what passed as manicured, they couldn’t imagine what Mosscap was going to make of, say, a rose garden, or a public park. Point is: this one, arguably, maybe, if you give a damn, might feel a tiny bit less structured than the first one. Several chapters felt weaker than they should have, and I can’t shake the feeling that a little bit of extra length in each scene would have done wonders. Written with all of Chambers’ characteristic nuance and careful thought, this is a cozy, wholesome meditation on the nature of consciousness and its place in the natural world.

If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain. Sibling Dex, in his capacity as a renowned tea monk, would undoubtedly say that a key requirement of perfect tea is allowing it to steep; letting it soak in the water long enough to be powerful. While this book manages some strong, authentic moments, I’m still not convinced that Chambers can excel at the novella length, and the end result here was a middling read overall. These are the best parts of the book, and there are a few instances where the world and the characters align and say something profound about the human condition.The robots left the factories and walked out into the wilderness to stop humankind from imploding but made the ‘Parting Promise’ as they left. Without context, it seems bizarrely negative to say I loved that Sibling Dex has mental health issues and exists in a world where human unhappiness is real and allowed to be real, despite the fact that humanity as a whole has learned to live in harmony both with the natural world and (mostly) with each other. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is the second book in The Monk and Robot Series, the second book after A Psalm for the Wild Built. By which I mean, this is a gentle, healing, beautiful book that also doesn’t shy away from the reality of sadness and lostness, or the general complexity of humans and human relations.

I like seeing them encounter other communities and people together, and it’s a good direction for the sequel to have gone in, as the first book was robot and monk getting to know each other, while this book explores various angles and approaches to technology and life from different and kind people. Yet somehow, in the absence of contact, they knew exactly where to stop growing outward so that they might give their neighbors space to thrive. People are very excited to meet a robot, for the most part, and through Mosscap experiencing them for the first time, we also get to see what this society looks like, and Dex gets a taste of some new perspective. The almost unique feature of the series – there are no antagonists, no ‘bad’ / ‘evil’ characters – everyone is eager to help and made you happy or at least content, it is an extremely altruistic society that lives a sustainable life, quite unlike our world. I can see this happening in small communities, but en masse, I agree with James Lovelock's (rest in peace, fellow misanthrope!However, the door is left open for another sequel, so perhaps this is all part of a proposed trilogy. Small ribbons had been tied to it by countless passersby, their colors faded and fraying in the open air.