This week I got to read some of my favorite sci-fi authors. First was Connie Willis's newest book, The Road to Roswell. What I like about Willis is she writes stories that good-heartedly poke fun at things that people either disdain or are highly invested in, like time travel and clairvoyance. This one addresses alien conspiracy theories. Willis weaves several tropes together--road trip, romantic comedy, and The Code of the West --and creates a cohesive story stocked with zany characters. She must have spent COVID lockdown watching Alien and Cowboy movies because both are an intricate part of communicating with the tumbleweed alien that abducted her. It is a bit kitsch, but it's well-done kitsch.
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A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers is the second in her Monk and Robot series. It is short, but it doesn't feel brief, I think because the main characters Sibling Dex, a tea monk, and Mosscap, a robot on a quest, change and grow throughout the book. In the past, robots awakened (which I take to mean gained sentience) leading to a split with humans They haven't interacted for many years until Dex and Mosscap met in the forest. In this book, the two of them travel together and become deeper friends. I didn't understand the title until almost the end of the book, but it is a lovely metaphor. Even though I would characterize this as a gentle book, it wrestles with thorny themes like identity, family, purpose, and change. I don't know if other Robot and Monk books are planned, but I hope so. Here is my review of the first book: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Becky+Chambers
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