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High Times in the Low Parliament Kindle Edition
"[A] cheeky lesbian stoner fantasy . . . This is gallows humor with a light touch."—The New York Times Book Review
A NPR Best of the Year pick!
A Most Anticipated Pick for Autostraddle | LGBTQ Reads
Award-winning author Kelly Robson returns with High Times in the Low Parliament, a lighthearted romp through an 18th-century London featuring flirtatious scribes, irritable fairies, and the dangers of Parliament.
Lana Baker is Aldgate's finest scribe, with a sharp pen and an even sharper wit. Gregarious, charming, and ever so eager to please, she agrees to deliver a message for another lovely scribe in exchange for kisses and ends up getting sent to Low Parliament by a temperamental fairy as a result.
As Lana transcribes the endless circular arguments of Parliament, the debates grow tenser and more desperate. Due to long-standing tradition, a hung vote will cause Parliament to flood and a return to endless war. Lana must rely on an unlikely pair of comrades—Bugbite, the curmudgeonly fairy, and Eloquentia, the bewitching human deputy—to save humanity (and maybe even woo one or two lucky ladies), come hell or high water.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTordotcom
- Publication dateAugust 9, 2022
- File size2652 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"[A] cheeky lesbian stoner fantasy . . . This is gallows humor with a light touch."―The New York Times Book Review
"Witty, warmhearted, frequently gorgeous, and an awful lot of fun."―NPR
"Lana Baker is a scoundrel and a layabout, and I adore her."―Emporia Gazette
“High Times is funny, literally outlandish, and deeply relevant. A dazzling world, a terrifying predicament, and a lot of hallucinogenic drugs combine in an unlikely, engaging tale of friendship, wit, heroism, and romance.”―Malka Older
“Hilarious, and at times hallucinogenic, Kelly Robson’s High Times in Low Parliament lives up to its title. This book could flirt the knickers off a nun―or a politician―or a wicked fairy―then swagger back to snuggle us before our pillows grew cold.”―C.S.E. Cooney
“A great read, with all the right ingredients!”―Ellen Kushner
“A satirical send-up of politicians and bureaucrats wrapped in a story of queer love and female friendship, sprinkled with fairy dust . . . Readers who like their political fantasies and power trips to go down with a spoonful of sugar will eat this up.”―Library Journal
"Robson’s story, like Lana, is a tease, fascinating and clever . . . The political satire is sharp though, in this lighthearted romp."―Booklist
“Robson’s fans will enjoy this easygoing perspective on a politically charged fairy tale world.”―Publisher's Weekly
“High Times in the Low Parliament is, at its best, demented fun and shrewd satire . . . Robson has introduced us to a thoroughly engaging rogue in Lana, along with an appealingly grumpy fairy who comes to learn that humans might, after all, be worth saving from themselves. It's a pair we wouldn't mind visiting again.”―Locus
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B09CNDSKZH
- Publisher : Tordotcom (August 9, 2022)
- Publication date : August 9, 2022
- Language : English
- File size : 2652 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 162 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1250823021
- Best Sellers Rank: #612,507 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,229 in LGBTQ+ Fantasy Fiction
- #2,668 in Dragons & Mythical Creatures Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #2,757 in Historical Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Like you, I'm a passionate reader. I spent most of my teenage years either hanging out at the drugstore waiting for new issues of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, or when I was in the city, lurking in the SF and Fantasy section of the bookstore. This was pre-Internet and since there were no bookstores in my town and the library was pretty bare, good books -- the kind that made my heart sing -- were precious treasures. To this day, nothing is more important to me than reading, nothing is more delicious than a great novel, and few people are as important as my favorite writers.
My writing life has been pretty diverse. I've edited science books, and from 2008 to 2012 I had the great good luck to write a monthly wine column for Chatelaine, the largest women's magazine in Canada. I've published short fiction at Tor.com, Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and a number of anthologies. Several of my stories have been chosen for "year's best" anthologies, and in the past two years I've been a finalist for several high-profile awards.
My favorite writers are Connie Willis, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Bishop, Jack Womack, Hilary Mantel, Alan Bennett, Patrick O'Brian, A.M. Dellamonica, Saladin Ahmed, Gemma Files, Maureen McHugh, Cat Rambo, Peter Watts, and Caitlin Sweet. I have a huge soft spot for classic literature, including Jane Austen, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Ford Maddox Ford, John Galsworthy, George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell. I also love reading non-fiction -- history, historical geography, and science.
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That said, I wasn't the right reader for this. It took me two thirds of the story before I warmed to the main character, Lana. I am pretty sure I was meant to like her much sooner than that, but I didn't. For instance, here is a paragraph from chapter 4 in which Lana thinks about the fairy Bugbite. To me, this reads as calculatingly manipulative where it might have been compassionate:-
Her every bone ached. All she wanted was to fall into bed, but here was an opportunity. Bugbite's size and homeliness would make her an object of ridicule among fairies, and outcasts always yearned for friends. Lana still had a chance to make an impression on the fairy, and she wasn't about to waste it.
It didn't help that I'd recently read -- and loved -- another of the Nebula-nominated novellas, C. L. Polk's "Even Though I Knew the End," rooting for its main character from start to finish (coincidentally, also a lesbian).
Many other readers love "High Times in the Low Parliament," but not, alas, me.
2 and a half out of five hung stars.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
Based on the cover and blurb, I thought this would be right up my street: a comedic romp that satirises political bureaucracy with fae folk and feminism? Sign me up now!
Sadly, this just didn’t work for me. There is barely any plot at all, just Lana and her new fairy and human friends wandering around doing endless ‘hits’ of yeast or mushroom scales, snoozing, flirting and chatting casually about their impending doom by drowning.
Everything feels so hopeless and incomprehensible that it actually did resemble real-world politics in action, but with lower stakes (if none of them are too worried about the threat looming over them, then why should I be?) and less attempted humour. Even when Lana eventually came up with a plan, I can’t say I really understood it or why it would solve anything.
The best bit of the book, for me, was Lana and Bugbite, who were great fun in a female-Clerks kind of way. The other characters felt rather two-dimensional in comparison, with no real personality or development between them. Like the satire and the humour, they just fell flat for me… and yes, I did get them, I just didn’t enjoy them.
And that sentiment really applied to the book as a whole: I like the concept, the world and the two main characters but the vague and meandering execution left the whole book feeling like a wearisome slog through some obscure and technical historical political transcripts, while stoned. I see what the author was going for there, but it didn’t make for a great reading experience.
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog