Book Review: Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky · 11:23pm Nov 25th, 2012

Talking to myself. Writing for writing's sake, criticism for criticism's sake.

Last summer, I saw Metro 2033 the video game on sale in the Steam store. I heard that it was a video game based on a book, and after Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation theorized that video games would be better suited being adapted from novels or vice-versa, I was intrigued. I bought the game and then picked up a copy of the book.

Premise: Humanity has killed themselves, yet again, and the last surviving members of the human race are living in the Moscow Metro. A twenty year-old man named Artyom lives in a station called VDNKh, and this station is the first line of defense against the outside. Every day, they're attacked by mutants from the surface called the Dark Ones. A stranger, who claims he can solve all of VDNKh's problems, comes up to Artyom and tasks him with quest of informing the rest of the metro if he fails at his mission and doesn't come back. Surprise, surprise, he doesn't, and Artyom has to leave his station for the first time in his adult life, has to head to the legendary station of Polis to inform the Metro of the impending threat; and, along the way, he meets the eclectic people of the metro and learns a bit about himself in the process.

Let me say that, being the ignorant American I am, I had to pick up the English translation, as the book was written in Russian. The fact that it was a translation, coupled with the fact I'm an exceptionally slow reader with a very short attention span, means that it took me about a month to read the four hundred fifty-eight pages.

THE BAD

Yes, translation. There's only one official one in existence, but the translation per se is really, really bad. There are more typos than the average fan fiction; there's double periods and other out of place punctuation marks, and a good deal of the sentences are extremely awkward. This shocked me, as it was published and edited by professionals. How the hell did they, the people working on it, miss so many? I couldn't believe that there were so many typos in this professionally published novel. The most I've ever seen is one per novel. But anyway, moving on. Let's start this off with the bad.

The first chapter is incredibly confusing and is mostly a massive information dump. Glukhovsky refers to things like "the Confederation," the "Hansa," the "Arbats," and a lot of other confusing terms that he seems to use interchangeably. Thankfully, this doesn't go on for long, but it's still unnecessarily confusing, and considering how relevant it is to the plot, is way too long.

Artyom, in himself (with a few notable exceptions), is a empty shell of a character. The guy has almost no personality, and it doesn't help that he's not particularly bright. He does some really stupid things, but it never seems like he learns from them or that he's willing to. On the way, he meets some really extreme ideas, and he never takes it upon himself to morally judge them or form an opinion on them. This leads me to believe that Artyom is a reader-insert character; the reader simply vicariously lives through Artyom; since Artyom, in himself, is exceptionally boring. He's impressed upon by many weirdos of the metro, and he never seems to complain. He just goes along with them for . . . why? That's slightly nebulous.

I was surprised how little the book had to do with actual mutants. Reading the synopsis and looking at the video game premise, you'd think the whole thing would be about humanity struggling to survive against a relentless hoard of monsters. And, indeed, at the beginning, this is what it seems like: Artyom's on patrol in the northern tunnels, watching out for mutants and talking with his buddies about how much of a threat the mutants are and how scary they are. He then goes on this big adventure to stop the mutants. But it turns out that people, not monsters, prove to be his big obstacle. I thought the synopsis on the back of the book was kind of misleading.

THE GOOD

When I got this book, I was expecting an unsettling horror story, the story of how a young man, after leaving his comfortable, peaceful station for the first time in his life, loses his innocence by traveling through the dark world he had been sheltered from his entire life—all thick with the oppressive atmosphere of a dark subway tunnel. Something like Fallout 3, in a nutshell.

And that's exactly what I got.

Remember when I said that the translation sucked? Well, despite that, somehow, the atmosphere still got through. It was suffocating. I could feel the walls of the metro closing around me, inch by inch, the more I read into the story. I, with Artyom, saw the atrocities that humans can commit against each other for the first time, shattering our illusions of an orderly metro system. I complain about Artyom being an empty shell of a character; but, in this case, it really, really works. I'm about Artyom's age, so I could really sympathize with everything he was feeling and experiencing. I really felt that I was Artyom, and that I was seeing the dark world with its people—some good, others horrible—for the first time. At least for me, I thought he was a really effective story-telling device. Those notable exceptions I mentioned earlier? There are some times, mostly when he's alone in the tunnels, when he ruminates on his purpose of being, why he's doing what he's doing, and to what end. But, no matter how despondent he gets, he pushes on and on, always questioning himself, wondering if he's doing the right thing, trying to convince himself that he's making a difference and that the whole metro depends on him. There weren't too many of these parts, but there were just enough for them to make me feel he wasn't too empty. And I really did care for him! There's a map in the back of the book of the Moscow Metro, and I would flip back to it between chapters, tracing with my finger Artyom's passage.

Regarding the atmosphere: Like I said, it was oppressive. Any of the story's shortcomings are irrelevant compared to this. When Artyom describes what it was like to see a Dark One for the first time, it sent shivers up my spine, and I could see the horrible gaping mouth, their beady red eyes . . . It was an excellent description. Truly horrifying, like the rest of the book. The whole thing is terrifying. There are a few bits that are scary in particular, but even after they're over, you still feel them, for you realize that that's the world they live in, and those things will never go away. They're always there, even when you turn your back. In fact, Glukhovsky calls this "Tunnel Syndrome."

Chapter 14, There Up Above. At the risk of spoilers, I'm not going to say anything about it—but suffice to say that everything about this chapter is excellent. Artyom is usually accompanied by the metro denizens, but in this chapter, he's all alone and has to survive by himself. Suspense, horror, atmosphere, story, struggle for survival—it's just awesome. I really wish I could say more, but I don't want to spoil it.

And then there's the end. In the last two pages, the book has this crazy, awesome plot twist. Afterwards, I put the book down and just stared at the wall, thinking about it, just absolutely shocked by everything and how it all fit together. In the last two pages! If you have even the slightest interest in this book, don't read the Wikipedia page. Do whatever you can to make sure that the ending isn't spoiled for you.

CONCLUSION

Despite the grammatical errors, despite the awkward sentences, despite a shallow protagonist, I cannot recommend this book enough. Everything else—the premise, the monsters, the metro phenomenons—are so great that they make everything bad fade away in comparison. If you can read Russian, then do it. I'm sure a lot of stuff was lost in translation.

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