A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk and Robot #1)
Becky Chambers
Sibling Dex, the monk of the series title, lives on Panga, a moon of a large planet. (I imagine it as like one of the moons of Jupiter.) Panga is an eco-utopia that evolved from an exploitative economy that built factories and depended on fossil fuels. The factories contained robots. Two hundred years ago those robots achieved sentience. Humans let them walk away with their independence and promised not to seek them out -- the Parting Promise. In the time since then the factories shut down and the economy was put on a sustainable basis.
Dex is a tea monk. They cycle around Panga, offering teas and counseling to people of the villages. But Dex is restless. One day they throw it all up and head off on a journey to an old building that, though now ruined, once served as a religious retreat. On the way they encounter Splendid Speckled Mosscap, a robot. (It turns out robots name themselves after the first thing they see on waking after assembly.) Mosscap is a sort of envoy of the robots to the humans, sent to find out what humans want. Mosscap accompanies Dex on their journey.
Dex undergoes a sort of crisis, in which they are counseled by Mosscap. Dex realizes that, despite having everything they want, they are not satisfied, and cannot help wanting more -- wanting things they don't really need and cannot easily have. This reminded me of the very first Economics class I took. One of the earliest things we were told is that economic demand is unlimited, because as soon as a person has everything they want, they want new things. Always wanting more is part of the human condition. Apparently though, it is not part of the Becky Chambers-type robot condition. Mosscap tells Dex that a robot can be content having everything it needs.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built seemed to me more of a philosophical treatise, a dialog like those Plato wrote, with Mosscap and Dex standing in for Socrates and his students. It is barely a novel. There isn't really much story here at all. That's why only three stars.