C

Brighter past, darker future. Turns out that epigraph was describing the quality of the Metro book series. Metro 2033 was a flawed, but ultimately worthwhile post-apocalyptic novel that created a compelling hellscape out of Moscow and its Metro system, complete with elements of Russian culture and movements that survived the missiles and cosmic horrors beyond human comprehension. Metro 2034 was an awful followup that was more of a side story, which sidelined the supernatural and introduced new characters and stakes that were utterly uninteresting to follow. Metro 2035 returns to Artyom’s story and has a lot to say about current Russian society. I just wish it didn’t completely destroy its own universe in the process.

From a technical standpoint, the book is better written than 2034. My editions for 2034 and 2035 were by the same translator, but the text was properly formatted this time. There were still some strange punctuation issues, with most words ending in “i” having that letter capitalized for no reason. And the prose itself was still very clunky. I don’t know how much of that is on the translation or just Dimitry’s skills as a writer. I doubt that reading a comparison of the burnt out Moscow with its remaining citizens stuck in the metro to a dead woman’s vagina holding in a baby is going to read any better in the original Russian version though. Yes, that is an actual passage in the book. It’s the worst that the book ever gets, but this sort of juvenile mean-spirited edge is pervasive throughout the new depiction of the world.

The theme of this book is that humanity are the true monsters of the Metro. Gone are the cosmic horrors and dangerous mutants of Metro 2033 and 2034, leaving just radiation on the surface to worry about. Multiple times in the book, characters will go above ground completely unprotected and return just fine with the exception of Artyom, who is irradiated or fine depending on what’s demanded by the plot. This used to be an excursion so dangerous, that the ones who made their living scavenging the destroyed city were regarded as heroes. Artyom apparently trained his eyes so that he was able to go up to the surface without blinding himself, something mentioned in this very book, but then others who had lived their entire lives underground had no problems on the surface during the day. The Kremlin, a building that would lure in and consume stalkers if they just glanced at it in 2033, no longer has its power. This is never really explained, other than the implication that Metro 2033 and Metro 2034 are “fairytales” written by Homer about Artyom and Hunter’s journey. As amusing as the literal Nazi criticising the grammar of Homer’s draft of Metro 2034 is, I hate this recontextualization.

Demystification of the previous books is a running theme throughout Metro 2035. The legendary Hunter is revealed to have been a bloodthirsty drunk, who could barely stand throughout his travels with Homer. Miller, hero and leader of the Order, beat his wife and abused his daughter. Sasha returns, and is still one of the worst written characters I’ve had the displeasure of knowing. No longer is she the female version of Artyom who wants to save the metro, she has literally become a whore who falls in love with anyone who spends more than an hour with her. Both Sasha and Anya, Artyom’s wife that he picked up in 2034, are so awfully written that I think this is one case where a lack of inclusivity would’ve actually benefited the story. Dimitry has failed twice now to write a compelling woman character, or at the very least one who’s mere existence is to be more than just a McGuffin to a man.

I’m fine with what happened to the characters (except for the women’s roles in the story), but removing the cosmic horror of the world removes a major element that set this world apart from other post-apocalyptic stories. It begs the question, what even were the dark ones in the first book if mutants and ghosts were just tall tales of Homer’s? They are the only supernatural entity left unexplained, and it feels off when they were supposed to be humanity’s last chance at salvation despite a later reveal that contradicts this belief. Yet they can't be chalked up as another myth because of how they are discussed by the characters in this book.

Artyom’s main drive in this story is to find a way to return to the surface and make contact with any survivors outside of Moscow. Meanwhile, famine and war between all of the metro’s factions are on the verge of breaking out. On his journey, he crosses paths multiple times with the major factions of the series; the Hansa merchants who represent the Russian oligarchs that control the majority of Russia’s wealth, the Reds who represent the desire to return to the empire of the USSR, the Reich who represent the various fascist movements present in Russian society, and the Order who are now mostly made up of Hansa personnel and represent the military force used to safeguard the nation from threats both foreign and domestic. Nearly every chapter follows a formula of meeting a faction, witnessing a horrific atrocity committed by said faction, and a miraculous escape from death that feels more and more like a total ass-pull each time it happens.

The big twist is that the old Russian government is still alive and has been exerting its influence over the metro ever since the apocalypse. The invisible watchers as they call themselves, literally say that they would step in and interfere to maintain the status quo including stopping the dark ones back in 2033 had Artyom not beat them to it, and preventing the current mushroom blight that is causing the famine. They set up signal jammers to prevent Moscow from communicating with the rest of the world so they could contain the civilians and continue their suffering. It not only nullifies everything that happened in the series up to that point, but flies in the face of the representation of each faction as a facet of Russian society and offers a single secret elite enemy as an easy target for society’s outrage when there is no such parallel to our reality.

When Artyom goes to his friends with this information and formulates a plan to break the systemic oppression of the metro, every single one of them either dies or betrays him with the exception of Anya. The book ends with Artyom and Anya driving off into the sunset, leaving the metro behind presumably for good and the survivors who remain stay blind to their salvation or actively work to suppress it.

The plot, particularly its final chapters, are without a doubt a parallel to the current status quo of Russia and Dimitry’s view of its citizens’ tolerance to oppression. It makes much more sense when discovering that Dimitry was involved in anti-Putin protests over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine war back when it started in early 2014, and has since fled Russia on the account of being branded a criminal and foreign agent for these criticisms. The protests utterly failed and I’m sure Dimitry felt the same sort of betrayal Artyom felt from his fellow countrymen after failing to rouse them against their oppressors. I understand the sentiment behind the story. It’s one I especially felt with the USA’s continued support of Israel and their genocidal occupation of Palestine. Was this story worth destroying the rich universe that Metro 2033 had created? Absolutely not!

I understand what Parable of the Talents is doing. I think it offers good criticism of American (more specifically, white Christian American) culture, politics, and religion. I also despise this book.

Octavia Butler’s follow up to Parable of the Sower is pretty much exactly what I expected, and feared it would be: more Parable of the Sower. It’s more unnervingly accurate predictions about modern USA, more abhorrent violence (particularly against women), more side characters that have zero personality to them, and more pseudo-intellectual drivel that is supposed to be taken as some newfound enlightenment. But by far my biggest gripe is how repetitive it all is. The edition that I read had an interview with Octavia Butler at the end, in which she said she had rewritten the first 150 pages of this book multiple times because she struggled to figure out where the story needed to go. Boy it sure as hell shows. It is abysmally slow, and retreads plot points over and over again. There had to be five or six conversations between Lauren and Bankole about leaving their settlement for a safer community to raise their unborn child in, and each time it ended with the same conclusion that they will stay. It got to a point where I just started skipping paragraphs and eventually entire pages until I found something new or interesting to read. To make matters worse, this is an overly verbose novel that is structured like a diary. Almost every entry starts by telling what major story event is to happen, and then prattles on for pages with setup for the event that we already know is going to happen. If I were to reduce this book to the sentences that actually move the plot forward or provide the thematic material to ponder, I could probably get this book down to about 50% of its length or less.

I’m no stranger to brutal depictions of violence and hatred in my books, but this book crossed my line. It’s not so much the descriptions themselves about the rape, murder, and torture that happens to everyone in this book, it’s the sheer prevalence of it all. Before the big invasion of Acorn and creation of the concentration camp, I was already numb to overexposure of all of it and stopped caring to read about how so-and-so was raped by a group of bandits and their children were sold into sex slavery like the last three characters that were introduced.

Talents’ most prominent critique is the one on the nature of religion, and how it is used by the people in power to justify the worst, most inhuman acts imaginable. This is primarily done through the lens of Christianity. But I don’t see why Lauren’s new religion of Earthseed wouldn’t be susceptible to the same forces when it becomes such a popular movement by the end of this book. I also don’t think it’s remotely profound to catch on so quickly via the internet to the point where universities and politicians are supporting and following it. This shit sounds like what an 18 year old would find deep, because it was written by one in-universe.

I genuinely did not want to continue this book past the first 70 pages, and I don’t feel like my efforts to finish were worth it. Every single one of the characters suck. Lauren is an insufferable know-it-all, her brother Marc is a manipulative coward who is willingly blind to the atrocities his church committed, her daughter Larkin is an unfortunate product of her upbringing, but is still kind of a moron well into adulthood, and everyone else is nothing more than fodder for the story to happen. This is a thoroughly unenjoyable book to the point that I don’t care about its broader meaning.

Cold Mountain is two things, a very detailed tale of the American civil war outside of its battles, and over indulgent. This is one of those “it’s about the journey, not the destination” type books, probably the most out of any that I’ve read. And boy does it take its sweet time detailing every note of the journey. Nothing is left for imagination with such vivid imagery and care put into the accuracy of the location and era this book takes place in. It’s by far the most compelling part of the book. Even the language used is meant to be of the time.

Cold Mountain feels like two separate stories for the vast majority of its length. One about the odyssey of Inman, a Confederate deserter’s travel from the hospital back to his home; and the other about Ada, a young woman who has to learn to survive after her preacher father passes away and leaves her on her own in rural Appalachia. Brief flashbacks from before the war tie the two together early on in their journeys, but there are long stretches of time where they are deep in their own struggles. Inman’s story covers the general politics and attitude of the average Confederate as he moves from town to town, while Ada’s shows the daily toil of survival in the 19th century. I was surprised to be more invested in the latter, but it’s easy to see why in hindsight. For all of the tales Inman heard and experienced about the horrors and futility of war, and the normalized dehumanizing evil that slavery cast on the way of life in the south, he doesn’t seem phased by any of it. Ada on the other hand, actually grows as a person and learns not only to survive, but how to step out of her father’s shadow.

I did not love this book, but I felt like it was worth my time. It was educational in a way. I had to look up quite a few terms, and in doing so, went down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Even when the plot felt like it was dragging its feet, I was still wrapped up in the immediate happenings of complete strangers as they passed by Inman, or the never ending work needed just to get through the winter on Ada’s farm.

H.P. Lovecraft’s first short story isn’t really anything special. By today’s standards it’s quaint, with a twist that is so predictable it’s hardly one at all. Most of the length of this story is dedicated to very lengthy descriptions of what the protagonist hears and sees, both real and imagined. What’s notable about it is the analytical approach to the sights and sounds described, never outright stating the nature of the beast, only assuming based on observations. This is an essential part of Lovecraft’s approach to horror and what makes it so influential, and it’s cool to see that it was in his work from the start.

I decided to skip ahead in my reading of Lovecraft’s work because I’ve been looking into a lot of media that base themselves on Lovecraftian horror, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth keeps coming up as a direct influence on them. While I did skip over the majority of his work to read this, I feel pretty confident in saying this is probably his best story and I understand why it’s so often used as an inspiration. It’s also where his abhorrent political and racial views are the most visible, which makes it so frustrating to talk about this story in a positive light.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a story of a man who hears about the relatively isolated town of Innsmouth on the New England coast while on an ancestral journey to Arkham. Curiosity gets the better of him and he decides to take a day trip, and ends up uncovering horrifying realizations about the residents, and even about himself in a bit of a departure from my previous experiences with his stories. All of the narrators in the stories I have read are typically just observers of strange phenomena or higher beings that may or may not even acknowledge humanity’s existence. Not so in Innsmouth. After a lengthy and somewhat hard to follow backstory of the town given by an old drunk, the narrator is besieged and hunted down by the resident monsters in an excellent chase sequence. And in a twist of events, the narrator discovers that his ancestry can be traced back to those very monsters as he slowly starts to look like one by the story’s end, making the ill-fated discovery of the town seem like a subliminal calling from the beginning. And that’s where the problematic views become too obvious to ignore.

H. P. Lovecraft was a notorious racist and especially despised race-mixing. The subplot in Innsmouth is all about a group of indigenous people in the pacific that bred with the fish people to create horrifying hybrid monsters, and it ties in to the history of the town itself, and the narrator’s lineage is a result of one of these relations. It is a blatant allegory to miscegenation, and how Lovecraft viewed it as a way of inferior traits to invade the white gene pool. And the isolated community that speaks in a throaty language, worships an old god, and has large dealings in a gold-like substance isn’t helping to dissuade any negative comparisons of the fish folk to Jewish people either.

It’s infuriating that these elements take such a spotlight in the story because this is the one where Lovecraft’s classic prose that is simultaneously vague and vivid works at its best. I almost forgot that I already knew the narrator was going to escape Innsmouth due to the past-tense nature of the story because I was so fixated on the moment. The horrors feel so much more real and threatening when they are taking an active interest instead of being a mere glimpse into the unknown. I guess I can take solace in the fact that Lovecraft is long dead, so I’m not really supporting him financially, and that his abhorrent beliefs are at least buried somewhat in allegory instead of being openly part of the story, so I can still recommend this as a classic influential work that can be enjoyed today without feeling the need to qualify that statement with as massive of an asterisk as I would with something like Gone With The Wind or Birth of a Nation.