[9] His 2016 Harper's story "So Subtle a Catch", which investigates the widespread theft of carp from British lakes, was included in the 2017 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
[10] The New York Times has praised Parkin's "literary eye for scenic and investigative detail" and described his criticism on gaming and play as "thoughtful and serious.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, Parkin argued that "the ability that video games have to allow us to inhabit another person or another position in life, or another race or gender, is hugely powerful, and something that we’ve only just started to explore.
The Library Journal claimed "this work ignites a series of debates crucial to the future of video games",[18] while The Washington Post praised Parkin's "deft sense of the ways that video games appeal to and satiate the longings of the spirit" describing the book as "an excellent sociocultural study of the 21st century's quintessential art form.
[22] A film adaptation of A Game of Birds and Wolves,[23] is in development at Steven Spielberg's production company Amblin Partners and DreamWorks Pictures, with a screenplay by Vicky Jones.
Writing in The Sunday Times, the historian Max Hastings described the book as "vivid and moving," arguing that it "spotlights a sorry aspect of Britain’s war that deserves to be better known.
"[26] In his 2022 book The Island of Extraordinary Captives, Parkin named the previously unidentified sitter in a Kurt Schwitters portrait as the German spy Ludwig Warschauer.