Metro 2033 is the book that formed the basis of the popular video game series for which it is perhaps better known, set in a world that has been devastated by nuclear war, where the remains of what is left of humanity have been forced to seek shelter in the Moscow metro system. A place where people live short, hard lives in a dark world beset by all manner of danger...
The story follows the adventures of Artyom - a seemingly unexceptional youth who resides at VDNKh - just one of the many metro stations that essentially act as towns and cities within the larger metro system. He spends his days sharing his time between working in a factory that uses mushrooms to make the tea for which his station is most famous for, and standing guard at the dark tunnel mouth from which any number of threats could arise at any given moment.
That is until he is approached by a 'stalker' - the men who brave the radioactive wastes in the city above the metro in order to bring back items that are essential or useful to the metro's continual battle for survival - and is given a message and a special mission that requires him to leave his home for the first time in his life and travel the metro system and alert everyone of an awful danger that has appeared...
I never actually played those games but I had heard of them, and I love the post-apocalyptic genre, and the synopsis sounded intriguing and exciting, however I found the book to be a slow and often unexciting slog that often felt more of a chore than it was a pleasure.
The world of Metro is interesting enough. Split into several dozen stations, each of which belongs to a faction of one sort or another - from fascists trying to launch a Forth Reich, to the hard line communists who run what is known as the 'Red line', to the extremely powerful and influential cartels that control the ring stations which represent the easiest and most circular route to traverse the metro and so the best trading routes, the numerous smaller independent stations each with their own inhabitants, ideals, and trends. All of this is visually represented in the book with a colour map of the metro that you will frequently find yourself referring to as you follow the main characters travels through the tunnels.
No, the problem is with the story itself and the fact that it feels slow, labored, fragmented, drawn out, and pointless.
Artyom is tasked with informing the metro of a terrible danger that threatens them all, yet he's never really told exactly what that danger is and it is left to speculation. It's made clear that he has to make it to Polis (essentially the capital city of the metro system) with his message, but it's never really made clear why that destination is so important, and he never deems it necessary to inform the many people he meets on his way there of the encroaching danger they face.
Along the way Artyom finds himself drawn into a couple of side quests that initially have a feeling of significance about them - chief amongst these when it is believed that Artyom is a prophesized one destined to retrieve a book of mystical importance from the Lenin Library in the radioactive wastes of old Moscow - but these events despite plentiful page time being dedicated to them ultimately peter out and end up as distractions with little meaning to them in terms of the overall story line.
Additionally the author makes frequent use of deus-ex-machina, as at every stage of his journey Artyom finds himself presented with *exactly* the person or event needed to ensure the continuation of his mission. For example being rescued at the exact point of an execution to be carried out by Nazi's when a completely random group of merry Trotskyists appear to spring him.
The author does in fairness make it part of the story that the fact the character constantly finds his bacon being saved in the nick of time and seemingly completely by coincidence at every turn may be part of some greater prophecy, but it happens so often that it's impossible to look at it as anything other than a lazy plot device to keep the story moving.
The resultant effect of this is that the character himself doesn't really grow or develop, because every time he comes across a challenge rather than have to think or fight his own way out, the exact person he needs to do it for him magically happens to appear.
Metro 2033 is a book that constantly has you thinking that things will start getting exciting just over the next page but it never really does. There is a twist in the tale but this literally happens in the last few pages by which time the end of the books feels like a bit of a mercy.
It's not a terrible story, just terribly mundane.
5/10
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