The Half Life of Valery K

I'm not quite 20% through this book but I am already entranced and so delighted to have something new from this author. IMO the worst thing to happen when you are reading a story is to find that you have no empathy with any of the characters (see: Wuthering Heights). I never have this concern when reading Pulley's books--I have read all of them--and her love stories are so beautifully constructed. It was quite a treat to stumble across Valery K.

Natasha Pulley has a lovely way of telling stories about the human need to be held set in historical stage sets. The suspense and intrigue are just tools to allow the characters to express fear, longing and the need for love. The fact that they are very subtle queer stories opens a question whether this subtlety is a brilliant way to expose the communality and essential humanity of queer love or a cynical way to appeal to a larger audience. As a queer man the resonance with the characters feels genuine so I will give her the benefit of the doubt given the historical nature of the novel. Valery’s world requires he live is the shadows. Like any greedy reader I want more time with these characters.

I ordered this before it was published and waited anxiously for the release date. I wasn't disappointed. Other's have already given info regarding the gist of the book so I will skip that. I will just say I have read every novel she has written and loved each one of them. I recommend them all.

The only thing I regret - now that I finished The Half Life of Valerie K and having checked out publication dates of her novels it looks as though I have a year and a half to two years before I get to read her next one!

My first read by this author, and kudos to her for humanizing the internal struggle of an intelligent person caught up in the contradictions and cruelty of a totalitarian state. And basing it on a little-known true event. And those aspects of it makes me glad I spent time with it. But the errors that took me right out of the novel. repeatedly As noted by other reviewers, there are anachronisms and the occasional use of British slang as spoken by non-English speaking Russians. But also scientific errors... minor ones like attributing the radiation from certain byproducts to "neutrons" (they aren't), and moderate ones (like a comparison to the amount of plutonium in the Hiroshima bomb, which wasn't a plutonium weapon at all (it was enriched uranium), and then a central plot point about what can happen with dispersed plutonium (what they claim, can't, and they misname the process anyway...) I'm trying to not add spoilers here with too much detail. It could have been so much better if the author had just run the draft past someone knowledgable about things nuclear.

This book is very well written and I found the main characters to be very engaging. This is the third book by Pulley that I have read. She does not disappoint. Although I liked Watchmaker and Pepper Harrow better, this book was extremely satisfying. One thing that strikes me is how well researched her books are both scientifically and historically. I will definitely read her other two books soon.