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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I read reviews of this book that loved it and those that panned it. I see both sides, though I really enjoyed it. I do not think anyone in this book is being presented as anything other than deeply, deeply flawed and traumatized humans trying to make the best decisions that they can in frankly awful circumstances.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Pulley’s beautiful and brilliant style.. a mention of Peru and an octopus called Albert
What’s not to adore?
What’s not to adore?
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Decided to move this to a four star instead of a five like I had previously done. This is my third time reading this, and I think I just don't care for it near as much as her other writings. It's not bad, but I don't feel like I get to know and love the characters enough. The story is way more plot forward I think.
This is terrific. Set in the USSR of 1963, the shadow of Stalin stalking everyone and everything, Kruschev now the big cheese. The climate of fear and suspicion is everywhere and all pervasive. Anything and everything you say or do could see you on the next train to a labour camp in Siberia somewhere, never to be heard from again. The other great fear due to state-led propaganda and the (dis)information machine is the US of A. Who is going to have the biggest and most powerful weapons first? Who is bluffing? Who will do what to get there? Really, not too dissimilar from today. Valery Kholkhanov is one very gifted man. Banished to a gulag because he is an academic - a biologist - he has through his wit and ability to always find an upside so far survived six years of his sentence. Bizarrely one day he is whisked out this ghastly existence, finding himself reinstated in lab in a city with the professor he, in his previous life, studied under now in charge of the lab. And what is his project? Basically studying the effects of different levels of radiation on mice and on the outside environment. Under the ever watchful, unsettling eyes of the KGB. No chance for independent thought here. Very quickly he finds that things are not as they seem, and it becomes a race against both time and what is happening in the environment, to save himself and those whom he becomes close to. The tension is almost unbearable, the description and despair of living life in such a dreadful place, the fear, the secrets, the pretending, knowing you can never escape. Great writing.
Is there anything better than picking a random book off the library shelf and finding a gem? The Half Life of Valery K is filled with Soviet-age science and thrills so disturbing I thought for a while I must be reading a sci-if thriller. And yet it is grounded in enough wry, dry humor, cutting insights about humanity and culture, and goodness to balance out the disturbing realities and leave you feeling hopeful.
It's 1963 in the Soviet Union, Valery wakes up in his prison camp bunk in Siberia. A KGB van drives up to the camp and Valery is transported to a secret research facility. The facility, known as the Lighthouse within City 40, is in the middle of an irradiation zone - think Chernobyl and its surrounding areas. Valery notices the dying flora along the road towards City 40 and is pretty certain he's supposed to become a human guinea pig for irradiation tests. Fortunately for him, he's actually supposed to follow up on his biology/biochemistry work in the field.
To cut a long synopsis short, Valery meets his former mentor Dr Resovkaya at the Lighthouse, as well as KGB man Shenkov, who might shoot Valery at the slightest misstep. Yet, instead of just intimidating Valery, Shenkov seems to care for him and even starts helping him uncover a conspiracy about the facility that has been blatantly obvious to Valery from his first moment in the restricted zone.
And just like a Matryoshka doll, there is another conspiracy hidden beneath the first, and maybe one more underneath that one. It's soon clear that Shenkov and Valery are destined to find each other, but, in typical Pulley fashion, there is at least one woman blocking the way to their happily ever after. Here it's two, Shenkov's wife Anna and Valery's mentor Elena Resovkaya.
I was looking forward to reading this book and hence very happy when I was approved for an ARC. Now that I have finished, I just don’t know how to review and rate the book.
Well, I should preface this review with some information. I really like Pulley’s style of writing, her books manage to draw me in every time, despite knowing that there’s certainly going to be at least one female character that is supposed to be the bad guy (or better gal) who is sabotaging the M/M romance. Further, I have lived behind the Iron Curtain and, although that doesn’t make me an expert in Soviet culture, I wish this book had had at least one sensitivity reader, because the anachronisms and cultural/language missteps were jarring and jarringly obvious to me. Last but not least, the book was listed under Sci-Fi, which is probably for its science content.
Here are just a few very basic things which make rating this book so very hard for me:
1) The anachronisms and cultural/language missteps that might have been bread crumbs for the big Sci-Fi plot twist weren't bread crumbs at all. They were annoying and took me out of the story every time they happened. Some examples:
- people were boiling water for tea or coffee in their offices in electric kettles - not 100% certain, but 95% sure people didn't use electric kettles and especially not in their offices
- kitchen roll was mentioned - definitely not in general use
- TV remote controls - I'm still laughing about this one
- people driving to work in their private cars - they'd use public transport to work; if a family owned a car at all, they'd most likely use it for long distance travel
- expressions like "oi, mate", "btw"; referencing James Bond
2) Valery is a bit of a sociopath. He's supposedly unable to read social cues, yet he manages to manipulate the people around him using social cues. He suffers from PTSD and is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but plunges ever deeper into the danger zone. Well, like any good anti-hero would do.
3) Shenkov is this tough KGB guy, who shoots people (off page) for remarking that the Kremlin might be lying to the people at the Lighthouse and City 40. Yet he's a softy at heart who, strangely, never shows any remorse at having to kill. He's obviously just following orders. He also loves his four children dearly and would turn heaven and earth to protect them.
4) Anna, Shenkov's wife, is a brilliant physicist who agreed to have children with Shenkov only when he takes care of them. She would probably leave her children and husband behind without a second thought should the opportunity arise.
Big Spoiler to the Ending ahead!!!
To punish Valery, Resovkaya manages to nap Shenkov for her radiation poisoning trials. Valery must rescue him from being used as a human lab rat. Together with Anna, who has just told Valery that she has terminal cancer and is going to divorce him, they come up with a plan to use radiation poisoning to free Shenkov and a bunch of other people from Resovkaya's top secret radiation poisoning lab within the top secret lab facility. Lo and behold, Shenkov and Valery make it out of City 40, but terminally ill Anna and her four children, one of which is dying of leukaemia, stay behind. Valery and Shenkov then get a new life under witness protection in the UK where they live happily ever after. What.The.Actual.F?
Shenkov, who would die for his own family, leaves them and never looks back? Never wonders whether they got out of City 40? Doesn't turn heaven and earth to get them to join him?
Anna suddenly likes taking care of her children so much that she wants to spend her final days with them, and is certain she can protect them from whatever trouble will come her way after the stunt they just pulled?
Valery is just fine with ... all of it?
To cut a long synopsis short, Valery meets his former mentor Dr Resovkaya at the Lighthouse, as well as KGB man Shenkov, who might shoot Valery at the slightest misstep. Yet, instead of just intimidating Valery, Shenkov seems to care for him and even starts helping him uncover a conspiracy about the facility that has been blatantly obvious to Valery from his first moment in the restricted zone.
And just like a Matryoshka doll, there is another conspiracy hidden beneath the first, and maybe one more underneath that one. It's soon clear that Shenkov and Valery are destined to find each other, but, in typical Pulley fashion, there is at least one woman blocking the way to their happily ever after. Here it's two, Shenkov's wife Anna and Valery's mentor Elena Resovkaya.
I was looking forward to reading this book and hence very happy when I was approved for an ARC. Now that I have finished, I just don’t know how to review and rate the book.
Well, I should preface this review with some information. I really like Pulley’s style of writing, her books manage to draw me in every time, despite knowing that there’s certainly going to be at least one female character that is supposed to be the bad guy (or better gal) who is sabotaging the M/M romance. Further, I have lived behind the Iron Curtain and, although that doesn’t make me an expert in Soviet culture, I wish this book had had at least one sensitivity reader, because the anachronisms and cultural/language missteps were jarring and jarringly obvious to me. Last but not least, the book was listed under Sci-Fi, which is probably for its science content.
Here are just a few very basic things which make rating this book so very hard for me:
1) The anachronisms and cultural/language missteps that might have been bread crumbs for the big Sci-Fi plot twist weren't bread crumbs at all. They were annoying and took me out of the story every time they happened. Some examples:
- people were boiling water for tea or coffee in their offices in electric kettles - not 100% certain, but 95% sure people didn't use electric kettles and especially not in their offices
- kitchen roll was mentioned - definitely not in general use
- TV remote controls - I'm still laughing about this one
- people driving to work in their private cars - they'd use public transport to work; if a family owned a car at all, they'd most likely use it for long distance travel
- expressions like "oi, mate", "btw"; referencing James Bond
2) Valery is a bit of a sociopath. He's supposedly unable to read social cues, yet he manages to manipulate the people around him using social cues. He suffers from PTSD and is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but plunges ever deeper into the danger zone. Well, like any good anti-hero would do.
3) Shenkov is this tough KGB guy, who shoots people (off page) for remarking that the Kremlin might be lying to the people at the Lighthouse and City 40. Yet he's a softy at heart who, strangely, never shows any remorse at having to kill. He's obviously just following orders. He also loves his four children dearly and would turn heaven and earth to protect them.
4) Anna, Shenkov's wife, is a brilliant physicist who agreed to have children with Shenkov only when he takes care of them. She would probably leave her children and husband behind without a second thought should the opportunity arise.
Big Spoiler to the Ending ahead!!!
Shenkov, who would die for his own family, leaves them and never looks back? Never wonders whether they got out of City 40? Doesn't turn heaven and earth to get them to join him?
Anna suddenly likes taking care of her children so much that she wants to spend her final days with them, and is certain she can protect them from whatever trouble will come her way after the stunt they just pulled?
Valery is just fine with ... all of it?