Review: Metro 2033

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ok. I liked this story a lot. I may have let it sit for too long after reading it before putting this review together, but I've got plenty of notes so here we go.

In parts this is very much an atmospheric horror story. It can be claustrophobic at times and if you're afraid of the dark you might find yourself struggling with some of the journey. As an example of this, at one point the protagonist, Artyom, travels for kilometres from one city (station) to the next without a torch, through the pitch black metro tunnels. He gets freaked out by sounds which he can't determine as his own footsteps or someone else's and even I wasn't sure what was real at this point. Then after switching directions too many times while he hesitated about whether to continue or retreat, he loses completely his sense of direction. Seriously. Imagine it. I've got no problem with the dark, but I do get slightly claustrophobic... this scene had me all anxious as though I were the one lost in the damned tunnel!

"The darkness surrounding him became total and nothing was visible. A strange sensation arose in Artyom, as if his body had disappeared. Only the rumour of his former self remained and he depended wholly on his mind."

In other parts this story is like an RPG dungeon crawl, Artyom basically travels from city to city, learning about the different cultures and their mythologies as he goes along, battling various thugs, "monsters," and cultists as they challenge him on his journey.

And in another respect this is partly a fantasy-horror. Unknown dangers in the metro tunnels are referred to as the "Dark Ones" and what we learn about them changes depending on which group of people are telling us about them. The largely isolated cities (stations) have developed their own poorly established mythologies regarding the unexplained terrors.

"Me and you, we really love living! We will crawl through the stinking underground, sleep in an embrace with pigs, eat rats, but we will survive! Right?"

Right. So, there was some kind of nuclear fallout as a result of a global warfare and only those people who either fled to the metro system, or were lucky enough to be there at the right time, appear to have survived. The story starts by explaining how these folks have staked out territorial boundaries in the tunnels and how cities have formed at the stations.

"The stations became independent and self-sufficient, distinctive dwarf states, with their own ideologies and regimes, their own leaders and armies."

The tunnel towns are having issues with what everyone refers to as "the Dark Ones" and a dude called "the Hunter" is on the job. Unfortunately, he may have the "authority" to collapse a section of tunnel, disconnecting an entire city from the rest of the system, to solve the problem for the greater good. Basically, Artyom needs to find a way to solve the crisis for his home city. His journey starts off by a chance opportunity and chance pretty much plays the biggest part in every direction he takes from then on.

"You have to understand, when a station is cut off from the metro, you can't survive there for long. The filters pack up, or the generators, or it begins to flood."

Artyom takes off on a giant quest traveling from station to station (or town to town, as you should start to think of it) learning and experiencing the different metro cultures. I wanted to describe this as a bit of an up and down sort of adventure, going from the highs of one culture to the lows of the next. But that's not really accurate. This is more like a ride down a bumpy/curvy children's slide with the constant downhill movement occasionally slowed by the bumps before the next section of descent. Everything gets gradually worse for the most part with only the rate of decline changing.

"terrible things now lurked in their depths, things which could squeeze the mind of the most reckless of daredevils in a vice of irrational horror."

For most of the story I really couldn't work out just how real these Dark Ones were supposed to be and actually I loved that. The people who we meet describe with great conviction exactly what the Dark Ones are, but this description changes depending on who is telling the story. Super realistic human nature in that respect. I began to treat the Dark Ones as less tangible the more versions of the story we heard, which is good, because I was hoping to not be reading a ghost story.

There's plenty of talk of magic and otherworldly things but these are all done really well, you hear them as the characters' beliefs and see some of the manifestations as the characters experience them, but it's neither explained away by science nor explicitly revealed as something mystical. I quite liked this approach. All of you horror and fantasy readers can imagine whatever grotesque things you like and us scifi readers will just imagine that everyone is tripping out and inventing stories to match their inexplicable experiences. Perfect.

"One cartridge - one death. Someone's life removed. A hundred grammes of tea cost five human lives. A length of sausage? Very cheap if you please: just fifteen lives. A quality leather jacket, on sale today, is just twenty-five so you're saving five lives. The daily exchange at this market was equal in lives to the entire population of the metro."

There are some very unique, or at least interesting, perspectives. I liked the example quoted above. Ammunition cartridges are currency. That makes sense. Ammunition is extremely limited, highly coveted and probably rather necessary. Every bullet can take a life. So if your tea costs five bullets, from another perspective your tea costs five lives.

"Judging from what's happened on earth from the time it was... uh... created, only one kind of love has been unique to God: He loves interesting stories. First He sets up an interesting situation and then He stands back to see what happens. If the result is a little flat, He adds a little pepper. So old man Shakespeare was right, all the world's a stage. Just not the one he was hinting at, he concluded."

That's just another interesting perspective which I couldn't resist sharing.

"Sounds probably had as hard a time getting through this darkness as light did."

I loved this, completely false idea, but perfect description of how thick the dark must have felt in those tunnels.

"His face seemed unnaturally peaceful, not one muscle was tense, and there was even a contemptuous smile which had just disappeared from his lips. "I've died", [redacted] said. "There is no more me.""

Look, I removed the character's name because I don't want to have you anticipating this scene. But I couldn't not mention this, the best example of a moment that made me pause and rewind, thinking that I'd missed something. This happened several times but mostly I hadn't missed anything, the story had just jumped in very strange directions. In this quoted example two guys were just walking and talking and next thing you know, one of them turns around and says he's dead. Whaaaat?

"And he decided that if there was anyone worth telling it all to, then it would be the person who sincerely considered himself to be the latest incarnation of Genghis Khan and and for whom time doesn't exist."

Oh, boy does Artyom meet some real peculiar types. Everyone he meets is kind of odd actually.

"The entire Great Library was built for the one-and-only Book. And it alone is hidden there. The rest are needed to help hide it. In reality, it is this book that is being sought. And it is being guarded"

The city of Polis has a library right above it, called the Great Library and Polis is well known for being a book haven. The stuff with the library gets very interesting, unexpected and fascinating but I'm not going to spoil it at all.

All the books brought down are attempts at finding the "one-and-only-book" with all of the knowledge of the past, present and future in it, up to the end of time. There are librarians up there who are said to be dangerous and need to be avoided. This all sounds like another skewed belief system but you'll have to read the book to see where it goes.

There are some real tv/film type easy-outs, the sort of thing where a ridiculous coincidence saves the day. I didn't really mind it but sometimes it was particularly obvious and kind of killed the moment.

Speaking of obvious things the ending seemed like the extremely obvious possibility to me. But the ending is not the point of this story, which really is about the journey. It's not a dissatisfying ending by any means at all, it's just not surprising either.

I'm going to go ahead and say that you should give this a try and now I'm just going to leave you with a bunch of my remaining quotes because this review is already long enough! And I've got reading to do, folks.

(Unfortunately, I'm not sure when I'll get back to this series but I'm hoping to continue before the end of the year.)

****

"Yes, and it was only for three more cartridges, and what's three cartridges if you exchange them for a phial of a sparkling elixir which helps you to come to terms with the imperfection of this world and restores a certain harmony?" - Artyom justifying the expense of an alcoholic beverage

View all my reviews