High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson – Review

Published: August 9, 2022

Publisher: Tordotcom

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 160 (Paperback)

My Rating: 2.0/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Kelly Robson is back with fairies, scribes, and many many kisses in High Times in the Low 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.

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So, I’ve been snookered again by a pretty cover. I admit, my hopes for this weren’t particularly high but the idea of a layabout scribe only interested in wooing the ladies teaming up with a curmudgeonly fairy intrigued me. Also, did I mention that I like the cover? Nice colors, cutesy art featuring fairies and mushrooms = me like.

First, I’ll start with the pros of the book because all negativity is just a bit of a buzzkill. And I’m also saving that for another book review. The world is actually fairly interesting. It seems there are no men. At all. I don’t recall a single one – only mothers, sisters, aunts, and grannies. What happened to all the men? And there are fairies, who apparently are begrudgingly in charge of keeping the humans from ceaseless war and wanton destruction. The fairies aren’t happy about this at all and it rather soured the temperament of the whole people. It’s set in a pseudo-Europe where the countries have slightly off names, but that seems to be because they’ve remained somewhat provincial in nature.

Our main character Lana is from Angland. London to be precise. And she’s a scribe who’s rather full of herself and in her attempts to woo someone, she ends up being drafted as a Low Parliament scribe. Most unfortunate because the Parliament is hung and if they don’t unhang themselves the fairies are going to flood the place and drown everyone. So, Lana hands out magic yeast drugs, befriends Bugbite (the scribe’s fairy overseer) and tries to fix things the best she can. All while wooing one of the Parliamentary deputies she spent pages and pages fawning over.

This all sounds great, right? Yes! It sounds fun and quirky, but somehow it was so god awful boring after about 30 pages I was nearly ready to give up! It was a mere 160 pages, so I pushed on through and it just felt so pointless and meandering until riiiiight at the very end where everything worked out happily ever after. I really just feel like I wasted several hours of my life and I’m a little annoyed at myself for not DNFing this. So, If you’re looking for mundane fantasy where the tedium of bureaucracy cannot be overcome even by the promise of drowning, check this out.