MY READER'S BLOCK: Deal Me In Week #20: "The Dragon of Pripyat"

SCAM artist alert

Apparently there is someone calling themself "Luigi Calloway" out there who is claiming to be associated with the Mount TBR Reading Challenge. He is contacting authors and telling them if they pay him, then their books will be used for the challenge. It's possible he's also telling people they must pay to participate in any way. Please know that there is absolutely no charge associated in any way with this reading challenge and that this person does not represent me or anything associated with my blog. There will NEVER be a reason for anyone to have to pay for participation in any way for any of my challenges. If only people who exert this much time and effort on scamming people would put it into something worthwhile....like reading their own books!

Monday, May 22, 2017

Deal Me In Week #20: "The Dragon of Pripyat"

I'm still working my way through Jay's Deal Me In Challenge . In a nutshell--we line up 52 short stories for the year, we match those stories up to a card in a regular deck of card, and each week we shuffle our deck (of real cards) and draw a card from whatever remains in the deck. Last week I drew the Five of Spades which corresponds to "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder (from The Year's Best Science Fiction 17th Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois, ed.).

photo credit

"The Dragon of Pripyat" takes place long after the Chernobyl disaster. The site is still "hot" radioactively and there is always a danger that another disaster could be triggered. Gennady Malianov is a freelance nuclear inspector who is hired by the Chernobyl Trust to investigate the site. Someone is extorting money from the Trust by threatening to trigger just such a disaster unless they are paid. Malianov finds more than he bargained for when a old man living in the danger zone tells him of a dragon living near the reactor's remains.