The Half Life of Valery K

April 1, 2022

British novelist Pulley (The Kingdoms), noted for her speculative fiction and fantasy titles, here builds a thriller on the true story of a 1957 nuclear explosion near Chelyabinsk, a city in Siberia. Even today, the scientific record of this horrific incident is uninformative. The potential for catastrophe in this still-secret radioecological research center is alarming. Pulley imagines a second disaster in her volatile alt-history exploration. In 1963, Valery K, a biochemist sent to the gulag for political crimes, is reassigned to a lab in the center's "chocolate factory," where radiation research is ongoing. Very quickly he catches on to the explosive dangers bubbling in the lake where waste from 1957 was dumped. The people in charge pooh-pooh his concerns but he snags the attention of the resident KGB director. In an awesome twist, the two heroes work to prevent another massive blowout. VERDICT Scientific research, KGB shenanigans, queer love, and the heartache of suffering children are just a few of the enriching intricacies Pulley traces with intelligent wit and confident narration. A gifted writer of well-drawn characters, Pulley has given the nuclear noir genre a fresh and stimulating take on Chernobyl-style terror.--Barbara Conaty

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Starred review from May 9, 2022
The provocative, unsettling latest by Pulley (The Kingdom) revolves around a horrifying and secretive research project deep in the countryside of the Soviet Union in 1963. After having spent several years in a Siberian prison camp, biochemist Valery Kolkhanov is moved to the facility, where he’s initially pleased with the warm water, plentiful food, and opportunity to study an irradiated ecosystem. Eventually, he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems, despite assurances from his former professor and current boss, the glamorous Dr. Resovskaya. As Valery forms an unusual bond with Konstantin Shenkov, the KGB officer in charge of security for the center, the two discover evidence of a conspiracy along with unspeakable human damage caused by the facility’s experiments with radiation exposure, and find their lives at risk. Pulley, extrapolating out from the records of a historic Soviet research center, raises questions about scientific experimentation and the ways in which it can be manipulated for less than honorable purposes. Her dark humor, which turns on the blind faith given to Soviet authority figures despite their outlandish claims, combines with complex characters and a clear understanding of radiation science to yield an explosive blend. The chilling result feels all too plausible. Agent: Jenny Savill, Andrew Nurnberg Assoc.

Starred review from May 15, 2022
Historical fantasy has been British writer Pulley's speciality in her previous novels, including The Kingdoms (2021), but in this galvanizing tale, the facts need no such embellishment. Valery, a gracious man of quiet courage and righteous ferocity, has shrewdly survived more than half of a ten-year sentence as a wrongfully convicted political prisoner in a Siberian prison labor camp. Suddenly, in 1963, he's taken to City 40, a top-secret Soviet compound containing plutonium-producing nuclear reactors and a research center ringed by a dying forest. This is Kyshtym, where unbeknownst to most of the world, and this is true, a 1957 nuclear-waste explosion released more radiation than the Chernobyl disaster. Now ""prisoner scientist"" Dr. Valery Kolkhanov, a biochemist and radiation expert, is instructed to keep his head down and do his assigned work. But when he discovers evidence of human radiation experiments, he risks all to investigate. What he can't decipher are his interactions with City 40's head of security, the dashing and terrifying KGB officer Shenkov. Surely it can't be that, he, like Valery, is hiding his queerness? From state tyranny and crimes against humanity to ingenuity and valor under deadly pressure as well as humor and forbidden love, Pulley's brilliantly conceived, vibrantly realized, and complexly suspenseful tale is all the more resounding in the glare of Russia's recklessness at Chernobyl during its latest, horrific invasion of Ukraine.

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