I LOVED this slim little book. I can’t wait to read more in this world. It’s this sort of future utopia where humanity has purposely returned 50% of the world to the wild after a technology / climate near-disaster.
Sibling Dex lives in a monastery where the head considers her job well done if she knows what’s up with all her monks (heaven forbid she tell them what to do!). But their life seems empty and unfulfilling so they leave everything they know and strike out to be a tea monk.
This means they spend some time creating the perfect blends of tea, then take their bicycle-powered tiny house on the roads between the villages and at each one they hear people’s troubles and then give them the perfect cup of tea.
But eventually even this is unfulfilling and so they set out into the wild… and encounter a robot. This is startling as the robots became conscious some time in the past and left to live out their lives in the wild and there has been no contact since. The robot is there to answer the all important question: What do humans need? And so begins what I hope will be a very long friendship and adventure.
The story has all these delightful tidbits and philosophical musings, and Sibling Dex has a very amusing voice. They are forever in their head (and sometimes out loud) saying things like “a whole-ass [thing]” or “[thing] as fuck.” It’s the perfect counterpoint to the utopian philosophy.
The audiobook narrator did a perfect job with Dex’s voice (and Mosscap’s as well) and made all of the humor even more amusing, and the philosophical bits hit even harder.
10/10 would read a much, much longer adventure about Dex and Mosscap. And I hope one day I will. Definitely going on my top 5 of the year.
Whimsical Dragonette 