The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka – Review

Published: January 16, 2024

Publisher: Tordotcom

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy, Horror

Pages: 361 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

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

Synopsis:
The Birds meets The Princess Bride in this tale of friendship, responsibility, and the primal force of nature.

“Murder owls are extreme,” Jude said. “What’s more extreme than murder owls?”

Madeleine Purdy is stuck in her home town library.

When tens of thousands of owls descend on the building, rending and tearing at anyone foolish enough to step outside, Mad is tasked with keeping her students safe, and distracted, while they seek a solution to their dilemma.

Perhaps they’ll find the inspiration they seek in her favorite childhood book, The Silent Queen….

With food and fresh water in low supply, the denizens of the library will have to find a way out, and soon, but the owls don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave…

The Parliament is a story of grief and missed opportunities, but also of courage and hope.

And of extremely sharp beaks.

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I couldn’t possibly resist a book with such a bright cover that happens to be about murder owls. While I expected horror I actually got a somewhat emotional story about a woman working though some childhood trauma with her hometown friends she’s been avoiding for years. 

Madeleine (Mad) Purdy is a cosmetics chemist who, at the request of her childhood friend Farrah, has returned to her small hometown to teach some classes at the local library. While she’s filled with anxiety about teaching a bunch of thirteen year-olds, a flock of tiny, murderous owls has descended around the library, trapping them inside. Of course, people must tempt fate and someone gets eaten down to the bones by the feathery flying piranhas. Those who stayed inside realize they’re now stuck and will probably have to save themselves because the town is incompetent. To keep the kids calm, Mad reads to them from her favorite book called The Silent Queen, which breaks up the present day chapters with a more traditional fantasy story. 

The addition of The Silent Queen seemed like an odd one at first, but it does start to parallel and inspire events in the present day library. I actually would have loved this as a standalone novella because it was interesting! Towards the beginning, the library chapters weren’t really grabbing my attention all that well and I kept reading for The Silent Queen chapters. Fortunately, as the book progressed everything became more engaging and was absolutely gripping by the end. 

The Parliament definitely sounds like an odd book, but I enjoyed it overall and if you think it sounds interesting, I’d encourage you to check it out. The owl situation is disturbing and on a few occasions legitimately pretty horrifying, but the real stuff is happening on an emotional level. Mad keeps reflecting back to the day her childhood best friend Hollis was killed in a school shooting and how the current situation is going to traumatize the children trapped in the library too. She’s also working out some things she’s been avoiding because she’s stuck in there with Hollis’s older brother Nash. The comparisons to The Birds and The Princess Bride are accurate, but this is really about childhood trauma and the effects it can have on someone for their entire life.