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The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms) was a page-turner! Dr Valery Kolkhanov gets sent from the gulag to City 40, where he has to study the effects of radiation on the environment.
Note that this book is not for everybody: radiation leads to severe health issues (including some body horror) and to death. Nobody's getting superpowers here. And the worst part is that it's based on real events in the Soviet Union, which I thankfully didn't know until I reached the afterword. It was bad enough when I read Chapter 7, a flashback to 1937 Germany, with Nazi scientists whose names I could recognise. Better to think that everything else was fictional...
And yet I absolutely loved the story: the science, the mystery, the characters and the competence! Valery is probably on the autism spectrum (and so is Anna). Shenkov is a fascinating KGB officer. And the slowly developing relationship between them (m/m leaning towards m/nb) was a nice addition to an excellent plot.
Note that this book is not for everybody: radiation leads to severe health issues (including some body horror) and to death. Nobody's getting superpowers here. And the worst part is that it's based on real events in the Soviet Union, which I thankfully didn't know until I reached the afterword. It was bad enough when I read Chapter 7, a flashback to 1937 Germany, with Nazi scientists whose names I could recognise. Better to think that everything else was fictional...
And yet I absolutely loved the story: the science, the mystery, the characters and the competence! Valery is probably on the autism spectrum (and so is Anna). Shenkov is a fascinating KGB officer. And the slowly developing relationship between them (m/m leaning towards m/nb) was a nice addition to an excellent plot.
