In A Prayer for the Crown Shy, Chambers returns to Panga and follows Sibling Dex and Mosscap as they travel through the different areas and settlements of Panga on their way to the City. Until the day a robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap walked up to Sibling Dex, a tea monk, and asked “What do people need?” My opinions are my own.In 2021, Becky Chambers introduced readers to the moon of Panga, where, centuries ago, the civilization’s robots gained consciousness and, en masse, walked off into the surrounding wilderness and were never heard from again. I received an advance reader copy from Tordotcom via NetGalley. I initially thought the journey is more important than the destination, but it’s more accurate to say the emotional destination is more important than the physical destination. Sibling Dex’s internal conflicts make an interesting backdrop to Mosscap’s mission to understand how humanity is doing a few centuries after the robots woke up and decided to leave. This is the central question, what do you need? The answers are simple and complex, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. The robot spread it’s arms before the crowd. Yes!” Mosscap said, as if remembering where it was and why. The humans within those communities can also be like crown shy trees – interdependent, but not touching. The human communities that Mosscap and Sibling Dex visit are like crown shy trees in a forest – inter-connected, interdependent, but not touching.
They travel from community to community on their way to the City. With Mosscap and Sibling Dex so engaged in human society, A Prayer for the Crown Shy has a very different rhythm than A Psalm for the Wild Built.
In the sheer delight category, Mosscap meets a dog. And if I were the type of person to join a cult, I’d probably join Becky Chamber’s Tea Monk cult, which sadly does not exist. It’s easy to describe one or the other and harder to get communicate “I’m thinking deep thoughts and feeling feelings all over the place!” So just assume that all the thoughts and responses are happening at once. This is a difficult book to review because my response to it is a blend of intellectual and emotional that’s hard to capture. I opened A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, read the first sentence and felt my shoulders lower and my jaw unclench.
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