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    High Times in the Low Parliament
    High Times in the Low Parliament
    High Times in the Low Parliament
    Audiobook4 hours

    High Times in the Low Parliament

    Written by Kelly Robson

    Narrated by Amy Scanlon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nebula Award–winning author Kelly Robson returns with a charming historical fantasy romp featuring a flirtatious scribe, some irritable fairies, and a precarious 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, only to be shipped off to the Low Parliament by a temperamental fairy.

    As Lana transcribes the endless circular arguments of Parliament, the debatesgrow tenser and more desperate. Due to long-standing tradition, a hungvote will cause Parliament to flood and a return to endless war. Lana must rely
    on an unlikely pair of comrades—Bugbite, the curmudgeonly fairy taskmaster,and Eloquentia, the bewitching human deputy—if she’s to save humanity andlive to flirt another day, come hell or high water.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 9, 2022
    ISBN9781980011712
    High Times in the Low Parliament
    Author

    Kelly Robson

    Kelly Robson lives in downtown Toronto with her wife, writer A.M. Dellamonia. Her novelette “A Human Stain” won the 2018 Nebula Award, and her time travel adventure Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach won the 2019 Aurora Award and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards. Kelly’s first short story collection Alias Space and Other Stories was published in 2021. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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    Reviews for High Times in the Low Parliament

    3.5/5

    47 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Funny and charming, all female world. I will have to listen to more of her work - reader great too
    • 4/5
      Set in 18th century Angland, Lana Baker is a very good scribe even if she says so herself. After an escapade goes badly wrong, she is sent to be a scribe for Parliament. Once there, she learns that if the deputies on the floor don’t reach a consensus, the fairies in charge will have parliament flooded and all will be drowned, including Lana and her fellow scribes. As Lana takes down the words of the lawmakers, she realizes that no one wants to compromise. Since she is but a lowly scribe, she has no power. All the fairies are mean spirited and disgusted with humans because no amount of cajoling and threatening them will get them to a vote where a two-thirds majority wins the day. She makes friends with the fairy, Bugbite, who rules over the scribes. Bugbite ensures that they both stay stoned for most of every day. Lana seldom sees a woman she isn’t attracted to and successfully beds any of them she wants until she sees and meets Eloquentia, a deputy, and therefore, part of the endless arguments occurring on the Parliament floor. She tries her best moves of Eloquentia, but the woman seems impervious to her advances. There is nothing typical about this book. Robson has obviously unleashed her imagination and it knows no bounds. The politicians are loosely based on the worst of today’s politicians, fairies rule the roost, the world is populated by women (ensuring that some will be upset that a woman-ruled world is no better than a male-dominated one). However, readers who can set aside pre-conceived notions about fairies and worlds dominated by women will undoubtedly enjoy this book.My thanks to Tordotcom and Edelweiss for an eARC.
    • 4/5
      After being conscripted to the low parliament through her own misfortune, skilled scribe and incorrigible flirt Lana Barker is swept away to a magical land of fairies under threat of imminent destruction. She has the strength of heart and high ideals of a traditional hero, but sets them against an unusual enemy: an out-of-touch and dispirited representative government. The ambiance of the setting and the charms of the main character carry this book. Lana is well-suited to a parliament defined by ritual, with her practiced methods of courtship mirroring the rules and traditions of lawmaking. Her attitude towards the parliament--a combination of desperate helplessness at a seemingly unsaveable world and a desire to do something about the failing government--feels timely and real, at least to the political climate in which I live. While that may make the book sound rather dark, more painful themes are balanced with a light-hearted and fairytale-like tone. Overall, it's a unique and interesting read.
    • 3/5
      That was... something.

      I'm not sure if the times were high but the characters certainly were stoned 90% of the time.
      I can't even really call the book confusing (though it was) because it was mostly just ambling along, but that fit perfectly with Lana, the protagonist. I certainly found her a curious character to follow so closely: she isn't concerned with anything but flirting, very aware of her physical advantages and keen on using them, and heavily relies on her charm to get her anything.

      I truly cannot tell you much about the plot. There's a parliament and it's sinking? Everyone is drowning but no decisions are made? There's a pretty dancer?

      But it all get resolved somehow.

      Weird, but also kinda entertaining, I ultimately didn't mind it and had a decent enough time.