A Prayer for the Crown-Shy: A Monk and Robot Book: 2 (Monk & Robot)

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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. Fans of gentle, smart, and hopeful science fiction will delight in this promising series starter.” — Publishers Weekly Much of the Monk and Robot series avoids conventional ideas of conflict, though Mosscap and Dex butt heads numerous times and their arguments always make for great reading. What I mean is that conflict is internal, non-violent, and more often than not a product of Dex struggling with their own feelings. I’m a bit more conscious about focusing on this stuff now. Because photos aren’t going to capture what it feels like, and focusing on future despair won’t prevent it, it’ll only prevent me from experiencing present peace. I’m not saying I’m great at it, it’s still a practice, but I am practicing. I started the last time I was in my mother’s homeland of the Philippines at the end of 2019, grieving my father. I was bug-bitten and sunburnt and staring at a magnificent little waterfall nestled within the trees, and I had the obvious yet quietly massive realization that it doesn’t stop when no one’s watching. It’s this gorgeous, heart-shifting marvel, and we can all crowd around and look at it but it doesn’t do it for us. It doesn’t stop at night, and it doesn’t care we’re there, and it doesn’t care that I’m grieving. How wonderful, how humbling, to share this world with life and power like this. As does a robot. Mosscap discovers that it has no answer for itself to its own question. It doesn’t know – at least not yet – what it needs or what its fellow robots need. I sincerely hope that the series will continue, and that we’ll get to follow Mosscap and Dex as they hunt for their own answers.

Everything in the world is shaped by its surroundings, whether we see them or not. We are all of us connected. Such a realization, when one truly sits with it, is humbling. So everything I loved about A Psalm for the Wild-Built is present in A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. 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. The robot sat for a moment, considering. “I don’t want to separate myself from other robots any more than I already have,” it said. “I am having the most incredible experience out here. I’ve seen species of trees that don’t live in my part of the world. I’ve been on a boat. I’ve played with domesticated cats. I have a *satchel*!” It gestured at the bag hanging at its side for emphasis. “A satchel for my belongings! I am doing things no robot has ever done, and while that’s marvelous, I . . . I don’t want to become removed from them. The aggregate differences I have are only going to increase as we continue along, Sibling Dex. It’s very nice to be famous, but I don’t know how I feel about it yet, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a trait I’ll have among my own kind as well. So, you see, it’s enough that I’m experientially different; I don’t want to be physically different, too.” It paused. “Does that make sense?” We do meet a diverse and interesting collection of humans, though, including a … I hesitate to say love interest … a friendly casual sex interest for Sibling Dex (the way this encounter is handled is so well done: there’s attraction, honesty and mutual respect on both sides, and breakfast, but no expectation of anything more or different between them at this time), a representative of group of humans who have chosen to reject all technology (again, this is handled with the delicacy that is typical of this author’s writing) and we get to meet Sibling Dex’s family. Who are A Lot in the best/worst way.It is the great beauty and tragedy of being human that we are each aware of our impermanence and individuality. Each of us, as with everything, has never existed before. There will never be another like us for all of time. With that understanding comes fear, urgency, a desire to know that we are not squandering this fleeting time.

As a person, who lived in the USSR and was also interested in social utopian experiments during the last few centuries across the globe, I still consider popular in the West, esp. the US, anti-capitalist and pro-communalist (including communist) attitudes of people of art, including SFF writers, often a little naïve (this in no way mean that the current system is perfect – it should be changed for both more equal and more just for the benefit of all, there are only different views what and how to change). For example, in this novella everyone is caring, there are no free riders, no people with mental abnormalities (incl. sociopathies, manias), and no problems. I think in this aspect the series is much weaker than The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, in which while the author definitely likes an anarch-communistic society she describes, she doesn’t do it in rose glasses, there are still problems, just of a different kind. This question provides a framework for Mosscap’s interaction with human communities, but each introduction to a new community model is richer than the answer to this one question could be, both for Mosscap and for us readers. And as they travel along, Dex and Mosscap’s friendship deepens as well. JadePhoenix13 on Reading The Wheel of Time: Taim Tells Lies and Rand Shares His Plan in Winter’s Heart (Part 3) 3 hours ago

Customer reviews

Roughly of the same novella-like length as A Psalm for the Wild-Built, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy probably won’t be named the feel-good book of 2022 in a way that the first book in the series was named a year prior (especially by me). It’s a tad bit darker, as Mosscap begins to confront its mortality when a piece of it malfunctions during the events of this book. It’s also a bit frustrating because Dex isn’t as patient as Mosscap, so that means they often get flummoxed explaining things to Mosscap, which doesn’t do too much for the touchy-feels. Mosscap, too, comes off as a little bit needier in this book, which can be a bit of an annoyance because it seemed to be so wise in the first book. However, while A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a notch below the previous book, it is still a commanding read. When Dex and Mosscap visit Dex’s family, the scene is so touching and heartfelt that it approaches and perhaps exceeds the quality of writing found in A Psalm for the Wild-Built. There are tender moments scattered here and there throughout the read, but this book has none of Dex’s wisdom offering tea monk services (they’re more of a guide in this novella), and the towns they visit are crowded with fans and onlookers, thus not offering the kind of solitude that A Psalm for the Wild-Built brought to readers by being set in the forests and mountains. The first book in Chambers’ new series feels like a moment to breathe, a novel that exists to give readers a place to rest and think… Recommended for fans of Chambers’ Wayfarers series and The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.” — Booklist, starred review As Dex escorts Mosscap from town to town, Mosscap’s ostensible purpose is to ask each group of humans, “what do you need?” as the answers to that question become Mosscap’s datapoints of research on how humans are doing. The answer to this is, of course, there is nothing wrong with Dex. They’re experiencing the human condition. Mosscap points this out, reminding both Dex and the reader that needing rest or care or a change of pace does not require justification, nor is it wrong to want them even when things are going well. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to earn the right to be alive. You are allowed to just be. Like, Psalm for the Wild-Built the plot is largely incidental: having returned from their trip to the wilderness, Sibling Dex is now Mosscap’s guide and companion as the pair of them tour the local villages so that Mosscap can ask the question it has been tasked with: what do humans need. Also like Psalm, the book has a light, picaresque quality that makes it a swift, accessible read—though that accessibility should not be taken for simplicity because Prayer builds upon, and is still wrangling with, the same philosophical and existential ideas that gave Psalm such depth and resonance.

Sibling Dex’s mental health—their inability to allow themselves the peace it was once their calling to give to others—continues to play a significant role in the narrative and, once again, I was really comforted by the way this was handled. 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. For Sibling Dex, of course, this is literally true in terms of the setting itself (a utopia in all but name) but, for the reader, it’s a perfect of allegorical reflection of a very specific mental health moment. I know I spoke about this a little in my review of the first book, but I need to reiterate it here because it’s so important to me. 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. I’ve used the word utopian a lot, but I guess the setting would more accurately be described as aspirational. But there’s a danger, in general, I think when we talk about utopian/aspirational settings to kind of *flatten* individual humanity into a kind of consensus of assumptions about what moral virtue is or how happiness can best be found. Which kind of ends up leading to this situation where, say, people with mental health issues have just sorta been … written out of our vision of an optimistic future? And I mean, like, thanks? I don’t think my existence is oppositional to a more compassionate and functional society. And once you’ve ditched the mentally ill you’re in this whole eugenics-ey groove without even noticing how you got there: I mean, what about people with disabilities, and queerness is kind of complicated, and would it just be easier all-round if everyone was white. After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. 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. How do you kill it?” A note of grief had entered its voice, but there was acceptance there, too, born out of a lifetime of watching wild things eat and be eaten. (p. 71)These themes are as tenderly explored in this series as everything else. Inside the small economy of a novella, Chambers gives them both weight and weightlessness all at once: they are not so grim or overwhelming that they overshadow the overall charm and playfulness and humor of the story (which is frankly feels-pummelingly good!), but they nonetheless assume a fully weighted presence in the narrative (I love, for example, how the meandering quality of the plot in this book echoes so perfectly the searching lost-ness that the characters feel).

They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. It’s one thing to be told about the world as it was,” Dex said. “It’s another to see a piece of it. We have ruins, and things like this”—they nodded at the stump—“but you’re the furthest thing from a stone shrine. It’s not like I ever doubted the Awakening happened, but meeting you made it real in a way no museum ever could. I think you’ll bring a lot of perspective to the people we meet, even if all they do is see you walk by.”

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Escape Rating A: If you’re looking for a story that will shed some light into the darkness, just as those crown-shy trees let light through to the forest floor, read A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Because they are the purest of hopepunk, and we all need that right now. I love that the phenomenon of 'crown-shyness' inspired the title and is a central metaphor for the story: Mosscap nodded at the wagon trailing dutifully behind Dex’s ox-bike. “Would you say this carries everything you need?”