C
Metro 2033 is the Russian post-apocalyptic version of The Odyssey. While the writing feels a little amateur and unclear at times, I’m willing to give Dimitri Glukhovsky the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s more to do with a poor english translation than a reflection of his writing quality.
I initially felt tempted to compare Metro to the standard YA dystopian fantasy novels a la Hunger Games, Maze Runner, etc., but I think this book is far too intelligent for that kind of comparison to be remotely accurate. Despite having a dystopian setting and a young protagonist, this book is much more interested in making its miserable hellscape feel like a legitimate look at what Russia would look like if its apocalyptic scenario actually played out. The Moscow Metro’s layout and Russian history is integral to shaping the world these characters live in, despite humanity now multiple generations into living in its tunnels. The older characters remember their parents fighting in the Soviet-Afghanistan war. Factions in the tunnels take direct influences from real-life political groups, such as the Reds from pro-Soviet Union ideals and the Fascists from the neo-nazi Russian National Unity group. Actual Russian secrets such as the Metro-2 (a rumored parallel metro system in Moscow intended for military use) are plot points later in the book. I even found myself studying the map of Moscow’s Metro lines as much as Artyom was, trying to get an understanding of the layout and visualize the journey from VDNKh to Polis myself.
There is also a great amount of international influence on the culture of the Metro. Polis operates on a caste system that is self described to be taken from India. There is a significant muslim population who, due to religious mandates against pork, are stuck eating rats. It’s a combination of those who were alive when the world ended being in Moscow and keeping their way of life as best they can and the reverence the Metro has to books and history so as to retain the information of the old world as best they can. But after 20 years of living underground, the old life has faded into myth and is an incomprehensibly fictional world to Artyom.
Great detail is put into the daily lives and routines of each station as you visit them. At VDNKh, the station’s clock is highly revered technology so that its residents can determine day and night and organize mushroom harvesting, military patrols, etc. Polis, being the “capital” of the metro, is so better lit than the rest of the metro that non-residents have to wear sunglasses to adjust to the bright light. Kitay-Gorod is a trading hub controlled by bandits, and has all of the delicacies and temptations a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas can offer. The currency of the entire metro is bullets, as even traveling between two large, “safe” stations is potentially fatal; not that being armed would save people from the Roadside Picnic-esque anomalies and supernatural phenomenon that reside in the spaces in between.
There’s an incredibly nihilistic quality of the worldbuilding reflecting the real history of Russia. The Reds have a dictator that overthrew the actual communists and consolidated power along the Red line, and a direct comparison between this and Stalin and Trotsky is made. Humanity is doomed to repeat their destructive mistakes over and over again. The message is overbearing and reminds me of some graffiti I saw in Pripyat: “Все в говне - everything is shit”.
The pacing of the book is all over the place, probably due to how it was originally released chapter by chapter before a publisher picked it up. Each chapter is a long examination of a certain aspect of the world and Artyom’s journey through it, and some of those are far more interesting than others. Other characters come and go and rarely stick around for more than a couple chapters for one reason or another; but with the chapter length, there’s plenty of time to latch onto them. Due to the constantly changing scenery and characters, it’s easy to forget what the goal and significance of Artyom’s journey is for a lot of the middle third of the book until things finally start to come back together. While the book plays into this in a clever 4th wall breaking section, I do feel it detracts from the author’s self-described metaphor for the main antagonists and the central theme of xenophobia surrounding them, simply because of how little influence they seemingly have on the story until we finally get an update on VDNKh ~250 pages in. That is, until you get to the finale and everything becomes clear just before the bitter and cruel end.
While this may not be my favorite post-apocalyptic story out there, it’s certainly a contender. Its world has just the right balance of meticulous detail and impossible mystery to completely absorb you and even the story itself.
Metro 2033 is the Russian post-apocalyptic version of The Odyssey. While the writing feels a little amateur and unclear at times, I’m willing to give Dimitri Glukhovsky the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s more to do with a poor english translation than a reflection of his writing quality.
I initially felt tempted to compare Metro to the standard YA dystopian fantasy novels a la Hunger Games, Maze Runner, etc., but I think this book is far too intelligent for that kind of comparison to be remotely accurate. Despite having a dystopian setting and a young protagonist, this book is much more interested in making its miserable hellscape feel like a legitimate look at what Russia would look like if its apocalyptic scenario actually played out. The Moscow Metro’s layout and Russian history is integral to shaping the world these characters live in, despite humanity now multiple generations into living in its tunnels. The older characters remember their parents fighting in the Soviet-Afghanistan war. Factions in the tunnels take direct influences from real-life political groups, such as the Reds from pro-Soviet Union ideals and the Fascists from the neo-nazi Russian National Unity group. Actual Russian secrets such as the Metro-2 (a rumored parallel metro system in Moscow intended for military use) are plot points later in the book. I even found myself studying the map of Moscow’s Metro lines as much as Artyom was, trying to get an understanding of the layout and visualize the journey from VDNKh to Polis myself.
There is also a great amount of international influence on the culture of the Metro. Polis operates on a caste system that is self described to be taken from India. There is a significant muslim population who, due to religious mandates against pork, are stuck eating rats. It’s a combination of those who were alive when the world ended being in Moscow and keeping their way of life as best they can and the reverence the Metro has to books and history so as to retain the information of the old world as best they can. But after 20 years of living underground, the old life has faded into myth and is an incomprehensibly fictional world to Artyom.
Great detail is put into the daily lives and routines of each station as you visit them. At VDNKh, the station’s clock is highly revered technology so that its residents can determine day and night and organize mushroom harvesting, military patrols, etc. Polis, being the “capital” of the metro, is so better lit than the rest of the metro that non-residents have to wear sunglasses to adjust to the bright light. Kitay-Gorod is a trading hub controlled by bandits, and has all of the delicacies and temptations a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas can offer. The currency of the entire metro is bullets, as even traveling between two large, “safe” stations is potentially fatal; not that being armed would save people from the Roadside Picnic-esque anomalies and supernatural phenomenon that reside in the spaces in between.
There’s an incredibly nihilistic quality of the worldbuilding reflecting the real history of Russia. The Reds have a dictator that overthrew the actual communists and consolidated power along the Red line, and a direct comparison between this and Stalin and Trotsky is made. Humanity is doomed to repeat their destructive mistakes over and over again. The message is overbearing and reminds me of some graffiti I saw in Pripyat: “Все в говне - everything is shit”.
The pacing of the book is all over the place, probably due to how it was originally released chapter by chapter before a publisher picked it up. Each chapter is a long examination of a certain aspect of the world and Artyom’s journey through it, and some of those are far more interesting than others. Other characters come and go and rarely stick around for more than a couple chapters for one reason or another; but with the chapter length, there’s plenty of time to latch onto them. Due to the constantly changing scenery and characters, it’s easy to forget what the goal and significance of Artyom’s journey is for a lot of the middle third of the book until things finally start to come back together. While the book plays into this in a clever 4th wall breaking section, I do feel it detracts from the author’s self-described metaphor for the main antagonists and the central theme of xenophobia surrounding them, simply because of how little influence they seemingly have on the story until we finally get an update on VDNKh ~250 pages in. That is, until you get to the finale and everything becomes clear just before the bitter and cruel end.
While this may not be my favorite post-apocalyptic story out there, it’s certainly a contender. Its world has just the right balance of meticulous detail and impossible mystery to completely absorb you and even the story itself.