THE SALT KING

A Jesuit and a nuclear inspector are polar-opposite pillars of (dis)belief in a biblical apocalypse hastened and hindered by social media.

The Vatican sends Father Avelyn Brocken back home to Hreodwater, a remote salt-mining town in England, to investigate the supposed miracle of another priest turning into a pillar of salt. Twelve years ago, young Avelyn left Hreodwater for the church, hiding his distinctive violet eyes behind contact lenses and lasering off his intricate tattoos, inked in tribute to the Hreoda’s slumbering cult idol, the Salt King. At the Dead Sea, Dr. Tallis Osho, a nuclear safety inspector accustomed to epileptic hallucinations, investigates phenomena similar to what’s happening in Hreodwater, particularly the eerie “salt light” shorting out electronics and eventually infecting humans with something akin to radiation poisoning. These two compelling, complicated figures anchor an end-of-days plot that is both global and intensely personal, as salt light spreads across the planet while Avelyn is drawn back into the dark thrall of the Salt King and his imminent waking. Having jumped among an alt-history 19th century, far future Mars, and the Bronze Age in her previous books, Pulley now transports us to a wholly recognizable 2030, where everyone has a persistent Covid cough and monks and doctors need likes and subscriptions so they can join in the cultural conversation. Drawing on some of her favorite narrative elements—time jumps, perspective shifts, mammoths—Pulley cleverly reckons with thorny questions of truth versus belief, faith versus institutions, and whether it’s better to navigate the unimaginable alone or with a companion whose very presence you doubt. Seeing is believing—or perhaps believing is seeing. Though the novel deals in prophecy and cataclysm, it champions free will down to its very last moments.

Gripping and heartfelt, this prismatic novel is more than worth its salt.