For Artyom, a new station is like a whole different city and these city stations form alliances, declare war on one another, and fight not just against the monsters that descend from above but also one another. Living in London, where each station can have its own feel and with a glance you can recognise where you are just by the pattern of tiles on a wall, for me Artyom’s journey was strangely familiar but also thrillingly terrifying. This is a fascinating story which starts small in a cramped, dimly lit and constantly threatened metro station platform and expands outwards into an exploration of what it means to exist, what people will do to cling on to some semblance of life, and how people have adapted to such an unnatural state as being stuck underground.Īs Artyom makes his journey towards the fabled city of Polis in the centre of the metro to find the man he was tasked with taking a message to, he comes across what may seem like a familiar problem with anybody who has to deal with a city underground system of how to get to where they need to go in the most efficient way. It also reminded me very strongly of the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, which I would be surprised if this wasn’t an influence on Glukhovsky as the men in Metro 2033 who head above ground at great risk to their own life to fetch fuel and materials are called stalkers. It reminded me partly of Lord of the Rings in that a young man has to take a vital and seemingly impossible task upon himself and travel though a whole range of varied dangers to reach a goal, and during this torturous task meet a range of friends and adversaries who may help or hinder in unexpected ways - growing and learning more about human nature as he goes. This is, without the faintest shadow of a doubt, the best post-apocalyptic fiction book that I have ever read, and also one of the best fantasy books I have ever read. Now and again a story will turn up which hits you like a ton of bricks, and Metro 2033 did that to me.

VDNKh is a bulwark against the mutant threat that creeps down the tunnel from above - a station that is home to Artyom until one day a man called Hunter appears who sees something within him, something which makes him task Artyom with an incredible journey through the various stations and populations of the Moscow metro. Decades later the metro is their entire life - stations are city states where ideologies take hold and cartridges for guns are currency.Īrtyom, a young man who can barely remember what is was like to be on the surface, lives in one of the northernmost stations of the metro. A few thousand survivors managed to get underground into the Moscow metro to escape the radiation and there is no way for them to know if anybody else on the planet had survived.

It’s 2033 and the human race has obliterated itself.

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky