|
|
Title | Metro 2033
| |
Author | Dmitry Glukhovsky
| |
Cover Art | ---
| |
Publisher | Gollanz - 2011
| |
First Printing | 2007
|
|
|
|
Title | Metro 2034
| |
Author | Dmitry Glukhovsky
| |
Cover Art | ---
| |
Publisher | ---
| |
First Printing | ---
|
| |
|
|
Title | Metro 2035
| |
Author | Dmitry Glukhovsky
| |
Cover Art | ---
| |
Publisher | ---
| |
First Printing | ---
|
| |
|
Category | Science Fiction
| |
Warnings | None
| |
Main Characters | Artyom
| |
Main Elements | Post-Apocalypse
| |
Website | ---
|
|
 Metro 2033
The year is 2033, the world has been reduced to rubble, and humanity is nearly extinct, half-destroyed cities having become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms—mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. A few score thousand human survivors live on in the Moscow Metro—the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters—or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. It is a world without a tomorrow, and feelings have given way to instinct—the most important of which is survival, at any price.
VDNKh, the northernmost inhabited station on its line, remains secure—but now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. In his hands he holds the future of his native station, the Metro, and perhaps the whole of humanity.
I'm not really into the whole post-apocalyptic thing, but I got my hands on this book for free so I thought I'd give it a try, in particular I was interested in the fact it took place in the Moscow metro system, haven't had much opportunity to read science fiction from more international sources.
Although I'm not sure it's science fiction, there seemed a fair amount there that seemed more fantasy than anything, but then it's meant to be horror. Ok so we have Artyom who lives at the end of one of the metro lines and there are creatures getting into the tunnels from above. He is tasked with a stranger to get to a station called Polis, to let them know if he doesn't come back. Thus begins a really, really, long trip that seems to take forever (taking ages to get from place to place seems a common theme in post-apocalyptic books, The Stand is the same). I have a metro in my city, and while of course I've never walked along the tracks, I know even the ones that are pretty far apart I can walk above ground in 20mins or so. It seems to take Artyom hours upon days to do the same. And at each station he gets to, we have to stop, describe it and the inhabitants, and then usually something terrible happens and Artyom is off to the next station. Even with the map in the front of the book I couldn't understand how he got from one station to the next, unless he went through unmarked maintenance tunnels. And of course as soon as he if finally heading in the right direction, he's then forced to take a long detour.
Every station makes it difficult for you to enter...or at least the first three quarters do, once Artyom gets to his main destination suddenly he can pass from station to station without being shot at/attacked/robbed/etc, like even the author got tired of making up unique stories for each station. Though to be fair, it was kind of interesting. Like you have an entire line taken over by Communists. And a few stations taken over by Facists. And then there was the one with the born again monks. Some are infested with mutants, others believe the deep hole they are digging will lead to hell, others believe a Great Worm dug out the station and gave birth to mankind (since I'm also reading Dune right now I almost had to laugh). And at each station he has to stop to talk to the locals and learn about their philosophies and cultures, and in most cases, someone ends up dead.
There is an overall sense that Artyom might be some kind of Chosen One, someone who is more attuned to the tunnels than most, and that much of what happened to him was a kind of fate, making sure he moved along in the right direction to be in the right place at the right time.
Thus halfway through the book, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to bother with the other two books...but as it got towards the end, not only did the action move more quickly, but I started wanting to know more about the really weird stuff. Like where there supposed to be actual demons trapped in the stars on the towers of the Kremlin, and was that goo in the Kremlin's basement really sentient? What were those voices in the tunnel, voices that could terrify a man to drop dead in his tracks, a magical book in the library above ground that has black pages and gold text. I'm kind of curious to know if there are going to be explanations for some of these bizarre things, and whether Artyom will become a true Chosen One and save mankind from...well, for the most part, themselves.
I did have to wonder, though they hadn't been trapped in the metro for more than Artyom's lifetime (20 years or so, he remembers being outside), inbreeding would become an issue no? It was so incredibly difficult for people like Artyom to travel from station to station, that you're kind of stuck with the gene pool in your own station. Oh...and there wasn't a single female character except for a hysterical mother and a little girl in a recurring dream. You'd think there would be some tough Russian women working as traders, or even in the military, but apparently not, I was kind of disappointed in that.
|
