If “The Silent Queen” was written into its own book I think I’d be interested, but as it stands, this book was not my thing. I wasn’t expecting the students to be annoying middle schoolers or most of the adults to be grown-up awkward kids that never actually grew out of that stage, and I definitely wasn’t expecting such sparse depictions of the more horrifying things the owls did in a horror/thriller. The first time we see how dangerous the birds were was hardly descriptive at all and I think that’s a consistent problem.

I take that back—everything that should be super descriptive isn’t, but things that don’t need to be are. For example, instead of showing that it’s chaos with the students and saying that everyone was talking over each other, we see every piece of each back-and-forth happen. That first incident, though? Barely anything. We have to read out all of Nash’s bad jokes, though.

3.8 rounds it up.
Murder owls, are you kidding me?! I had to read this one. I loved the concept. There was so many ways this story could have went and I was not expecting a whole other story inside the book. I like the way that grief and trauma were used in this book. I also liked how she as an adult was able to then help younger kids in a tramatic situation and relate. It helped her deal with her past issues. I really liked the friendship/romance that developed. (and that says a lot since I am not a big lover of romance troupes.) The only parts I was not as fond of were following two stories...i would have liked it better following the stories of the people in the library and the crazy horror of the owls. I loved the many books that they dived into though. I laughed at the part where the kids wanted to do a senance. I had mixed feelings at times at how the story was being told but I did enjoy watching it unfold.
I could not find the book on goodreads and I dont think amazon lets free books have reviews? I will post it closer to time on goodreads, my blog and possibly my instagram.

An imaginative, absurd premise is used to explore grief, trauma, healing, and how we can help each other find a new beginning. At times dark, at times loving and warm, this novel is wholly unique and displays Pokwatka's immense storytelling prowess. While I didn't love the fairy tale that was interspersed between the main story, I appreciated how it mirrored the "real world" narrative, and offered a way to connect more deeply with the young characters in the story. Another powerful novel from Pokwatka—I shall continue to be a fan!

The Parliament follows a woman who returns to her hometown to teach a class at the library. She left as an adult because she has a traumatic past. While at the library, a pack of killer owls haunts the library and everyone is trapped inside. While they are trapped, they also read Mad’s favorite book from childhood so we get chapters from that as well.

This book had a very interesting premise and is not like anything I have read before. I feel like the owl part was similar to survival stories like bird box. However, the other chapters thrown in were totally unique. I didn’t quite like the other story thrown in. I wish it was just the owl story. I liked the characters and the high stakes. I don’t think the other story needed to be there at all, it just took away from the story for me.

I know others love that part of the story so it might just be me. Thanks so much to netgalley and tor for the arc of this in exchange for an honest review!

If you are a lover of very dark fantasy, dark academia and have a love of owls, this book is for you. This may be a top read of the year! I absolutely love this book!

Aimee Pokwatka has a flair for introducing a plentitude of characters into her story and making everyone of them unique and fully-fleshed. The main character, Mads, went through a traumatic experience when she was younger that colors how she interacts with their other members of the library in realistic and believable ways (that make your heart ache for her and the help she never got). The shining point of this book, though, was the fantasy book Mads uses to distract the kids in the library during multi-day siege by the owls - it does feel like Pokwatka had a fantastic idea for a fantasy book but wasn't given the green light to write it. If "The Silent Queen" ever comes out as a standalone novel, I'll for sure buy it.

A complete review of this book will appear in Locus Magazine. The short version is that I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though there was a crew of adolescent magpies knocking on doors and windows while I was reading it (which in the context of the book was even more disturbing than normal).

A little bit spooky, a little bit weird, and quite heartfelt!
Yes, I am a little bit more frightened of birds now, but watching a group of people come together to overcome a problem!
I also loved that there was a book within the book. I enjoyed the story of The Silent Queen as much as the actual novel.

Just as I adored Self-Portrait with Nothing, so I adored The Parliament - Aimee Pokwatka is becoming an instant-read author for me. I think The Portrait will stick with me longer than Pokwatka's debut, however - whilst both books are immensely moving, the atmosphere of The Parliament is so pervasive, and I was still thinking about it each time I had to put the book down. The depiction of grief, trauma, and the slow, non-linear, process of healing was beautiful and, at times, heartwrenching. If I had to nitpick (and I don't want to, because subjectively I just loved this) there are some characters who aren't as fully formed as others - but all together they combine to make a great cast, who I found myself getting really attached to and rooting for. As a big fan of The Princess Bride, I enjoyed the story within a story - I wasn't always glad to be pulled away from the main action, but these sections always felt relevant and emphasised what the characters in the library were going through.
Applying my standard extra-half-star-if-I-cry rule (in my workplace's kitchen no less!), this is a five-star read.

“The Birds meets The Princess Bride” that was a tagline that I was excited when reading and it had everything that I was hoping for. I loved the idea of owls as a main idea. The characters were everything that I was hoping for and glad I got to read this. It works well with the idea of grief and hope.

This is Ms. Pokwatka's follow up to Self Portrait With Nothing, so I was of course intrigued to see where she was going to go next. Where that is is the childhood dream of being trapped in the library, but turned nightmarish because you're trapped by owls. There's also sideways reckoning with school shootings, and a story in a story, which I'm always a sucker for. The tension is exquisite, as is the way that Pokwatka couches these teens and the trauma they deal with, and how the adults in this small town stuck with them deal with things. (Props for killing the hunting bros quickly, also.) Pick this eerie little book up when it comes out in January!

Imgur link goes to the Instagram post scheduled for January 9th
Blog Post goes live January 9th
October Vlog features The Parliament - Should be live 11/7


The Parliament has a lot of potential with a fantastic premise but for me the character PoV really crippled it. This follows a group of people trapped inside a library as a swarm of flesh eating owls hovers outside, about 3000 based on the count by the characters themselves. Threaded throughout is also a YA story, almost fable in tone about a Queen who doesn’t have a voice saving her kingdom.

There were moments in this of fantastic gore, that lead to and helped the initial tension. Nothing like seeing a woman ripped to shreds by a swarm of tiny owls to setup the stakes in the beginning of a book. However the book tapered off after that for me. And I have no doubt it’ll do so even more so for casual readers. Truly the only thing that kept me going besides the the YA story within was my concern for the kids trapped with the adults, and that’s because of my overly empathetic concern for children. Not everyone is going to feel that way. After perhaps the 40% mark there is very little tension or attempt to build up the stakes and it’s very obvious.

Additionally our primary PoV character, Mad, is so awkward and stilted that it killed the story we had left. Thought trapped in this library I honestly remember more the constant obsession and flashbacks to a (granted very traumatic) event in her past that shapes her present with another character trapped with her. Just, it was a bit too much. Perhaps with a stronger writer it would have worked better but here it was frankly frustrating and deeply off-putting. It goes without saying the romance that was tied to this was completely unbelievable and bland.

I feel like there were a lot of nuggets of gold here: the YA story within the story, the moments of gore, and a few of the dialogue lines between the teens. Unfortunately so much of it fell flat as board besides that. I can’t say I super recommend it? Unless you just super feel drawn to it, it might be a pass for me.

3 out of 5 Flesh-Eating Owls

This is one of those books which can't quite seem to figure out what it wants to be and, as a result, doesn't really manage to do any of them in a way that works (for me, at least). It's a low-key horror book, with murderous owls literally ripping people to shreds, while there are also other speculative elements involved as people try to figure out what's going on and what's likely to happen. One thing it does quite well is the character work for the teenagers, who feel pretty realistic, while it also has a less impressive novel-within-a-novel as our protagonist tries to use the favourite book from her childhood to keep those teenagers from running riot.

The basic premise of The Parliament is that our main character, Madigan, has returned to her home town and makes a living doing science clubs - to be honest, this town is the last place she wants to be, as there's history between her and a number of the people we'll meet in this book, and then the murder owls turn up.

The author evokes the claustrophobic sense of a bunch of disparate people trapped together but since we're never really given an explanation for the phenomena itself, it falls a bit flat for me. I just found some of the characters downright annoying, with a deeply predictable romance sub-plot featuring heavily on that list - personally, when someone likes to crack bad jokes all the time, I would probably be imagining how to shove him out to the murder owls, not fantasising about getting together with him.

All in all, I'm not sure I would have bothered finishing this book if it weren't for the need to review it - there's parts of it I really liked but I found other elements either tedious or annoying, neither of which are qualities I look for in a book I want to go back to later.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

The owls are not what they seem…

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

“The Silent Queen”, the story-within-a-story fairly tale was beautifully written and I loved Alala and everyone else. It was dark, tragic, emotional, colourful. Why couldn’t this story have been published separately, developed even more? (Inconceivable! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) I would read it with pleasure!

As for the main story, “we are trapped in this library with thousands of homicidal owls outside, help” – I couldn’t connect with it. I’ve read and watched too many similar things before (minus the owls). The writing and the characters would have had to be exceptional to be seen in this crowd of cultural memories. So, I was bored, exasperated and scared all at once. The writing was bland and the characters were made in the same mould as those in countless other books on bestseller lists. I rolled my eyes and didn’t care about any of the trapped people, except for the kids. The kids were nice.

To me, it looks like the book is trying to violently hammer together two pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. Why must we once again use this plot device where the characters in a book are reading a book that the reader also gets to read? I kept turning those pages, though – because murder owls *are* scary.

Nash’s bad jokes were just about the only thing that I really liked in the owls part. “When do you go to the dentist? Tooth-hurty!” “Want to hear a joke about pizza? Never mind, It’s too cheesy.” Me: hoot, hoot, hoot. I am easily amused ;)

I was pleased with the ending (or rather, both endings). And I’ve just realised that I managed to have myself a Halloween read, which is unusual for me. You always get something out of books :)

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-book!

2,75⭐️

From my perspective "The Parliament" would make a great, cozy movie/mini-series, as it's very dialogue driven type of story. It works as a concept, but not really as a book. I couldn't quite devoted my whole attention to the story. For the bright side, I really enjoyed kids' characters and how they were written. There was care put to that. And I don't find rest of them bland, quite the opposite – it's a mix of interesting backgrounds and motives. It just didn't work as it wished it did.

3.5 stars rounded up. I initially adored the author's voice and the style of writing. They gave nice little insights into each character that revealed so much. The book's approach of alternating a fairytale being read to children with what was going on didn't work for me. Unlike Princess Bride (the book it is compared to) these two stories share similar percentages of the book. In PB we clearly have the main story then insights and quick views into the "real world". I didn't find this fairy tale added much to my experience, but I'm sure others will quite enjoy it. I found many of the characters to be stereotypes. Also, I just couldn't get past the poor crayfish, Jolene, being kept out of water for so long and having that situation addressed as if it was perfectly natural for that animal. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor.com books for the ADC.

In The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka, Chemist Madigan Purdy is trapped in a library with a group of tweens. When tens of thousands of owls descend on the building, tearing at anyone who steps outside, Madigan 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.

I had a difficult time getting invested in this book. The premise sounded promising in that it reflected Hitchcock's The Birds and The Princess Bride, both films I really enjoyed. I felt this story fell a bit flat in that regard. I was hoping for more intense, dramatic survival scenes.

I probably was not the audience for this particular book. The idea sounded promising, but for me, it didn't hit the mark that I was hoping in how the story was described.

#NetGalley @tordotcom

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for giving me access an ARC of The Parliament.

When murderous owls keep adults and young kids stranded in the library, Mad is tasked with keeping everyone safe, while they find a solution.

I really wanted to love this book but in all honesty I was bored and I was just pushing to get through it. I really disliked the cut between present day and the story being read out to the students and honestly, a lot more could have been done with this idea. What would you do if you were stranded in a building for days on end? After exhausting all avenues of escape, eventually, probably nothing. In real life, this would be damn boring.. and unfortunately this boring'ness flowed into the book.

2.5 stars from me

I was intrigued by this book, it was described as The Birds meets The Princess Bride, with murder owls.

But honestly, it just wasn't for me. There was nothing technically wrong with the book. I just didn't really connect with Mads and I found myself really struggling to pick the book up.

I can absolutely see how some people would love it, but I'm not that person.

This was a pretty interesting and unique book! It was a mix of a few genres but I would say the most prominent was fantasy. I would have loved more horror but the little bits it had were great.
I really love when books have a story within them so I enjoyed that element. The characters were well written and I liked that beyond the “murder owls” this was actually a story about friendship.