A Psalm for the Wild-Built

I'm normally a hard SF guy. Becky Chambers is the foremost writer of soft SF. A short, beautiful, novella.
More please.

I scratched my head for the first 64% of the book trying to figure out what the overarching message or storyline was but around there things started to make sense. About the time of the first reference to wild-built.I'm crossing my fingers this series does not go the way her Wayfarers series did for me. I loved the first book [b:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 22733729 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) Becky Chambers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405532474l/22733729.SY75.jpg 42270825], but just couldn't get interested in any of the characters introduced in the next 2 books. Adding the next book to my tbr.

This is a beautiful, quiet meditation on what the purpose of life is and finding one's best self. I liked the idea of a tea monk, I liked the idea of a book focused on a character's journey to find the purpose of their life and how to spend their time and I really liked the idea of a post-apocalyptic world that functions by letting the wild lands stay wild.

But exactly what a tea monk does is relatively unstructured, as is Sibling Dex's story in general. And while I found the conclusion beautiful, I also found it a little unconvincing since the philosophical denouement was dependent on the setting that Chambers developed, so ultimately it didn't really speak to the reader about: what is the purpose of me and my individuality and my life and my time?

The best speculative fiction exists in dialogue with the world as it is and I think Chambers slipped a little in that goal.

Loved it, but it feels more like a... sketch of a book? Like it was missing some substance? I adore how Ms Chambers writes about nature though.