I gather that Becky Chambers’s new Monk & Robot series has gotten a mixed reception. Broadly speaking people either love it or are frustrated by it. Since I love Chambers’s Wayfarers series, I thought I’d check the new series out.
I’m still not yet sure what, exactly, to think except to say I see why the dichotomy has arisen. Here’s one section that I found simply mind-boggling:
“The wagon’s lower deck quickly lost any semblance of organization, evolving rapid-fire into a hodgepodge laboratory. Planters and sunlamps filled every conceivable nook, their leaves and shoots constantly pushing the limits of how far their steward would let them creep. Stacks of used mugs containing the dregs of experiments both promising and pointless teetered on the table, awaiting the moment in which Dex had the brainspace to do the washing-up. A hanging rack took up residence on the ceiling and wasted no time in becoming laden to capacity with bundles of confettied flowers and fragrant leaves drying crisp. A fine dust of ground spices coated everything from the couch to the ladder to the inside of Dex’s nostrils, which regularly set bottles rattling with explosive sneezes.”
– Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built
The section starts quite well, and I see why the word cozy is applied to the series. Then, sadly, it gets worse. I don’t even terribly mind the mess in a food-prep space (dirty dishes to the ceiling and a coating of dust), as it could conceivably be just eccentric. (I mean, I prefer a clean home myself since I’m allergic to dust, and plant dust doesn’t help, but to each their own.)
But. Dex is “regularly” sneezing “explosive[ly]” all over the space where they mix the teas they’re offering to people they serve as a tea-monk.
Excuse me? SNEEZING—REGULARLY—ON DRINKS THEY SERVE TO OTHERS?!?
Disgusting is an understatement! The exact opposite to cozy. Ew! Ew, ew, ew, eww!
I do get that getting a book to print takes a good long while (a highly technical term, that). I wasn’t able to find out when Chambers started to write A Psalm for the Wild-Built, but the publishing deal was announced in July 2018 and the first book published in July 2021. In the acknowledgments for the sequel, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, she writes that she finished book 1 “just before lock-down started” and handed in book 2 “three months before I was eligible for my first [covid vaccination] jab”. It is therefore possible that it was not feasible to change the text.
Still, I should think that it’s not too much of a stretch to NOT SNEEZE ON FOODS AND DRINKS. In real life or in fiction. With or without a pandemic behind you (i.e., having been filled to the gills with information about cough etiquette and sneezing hygiene).
EWWWWWWWWW!!!
Chambers, Becky. A Psalm for the Wild-Built. New York: Tordotcom, 2021, p. 22-23.
Image by Eppu Jensen
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