METRO 2035

Author: Dmitry Glukhovsky
Year: 2018 (2015)
Publisher: Ersatz
Language: Swedish (Translator Ola Wallin) 

And so, the time has come to bring yet another book series for the year to a close; Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro-trilogy. The heroes of the first book “Metro 2033” (see review of Jun 2024) and “Metro 2034” (See review of August 2024) come together in the third and final volume, aptly named “Metro 2035”.

The story unfolds two years after the events of 2033 that had made Artyom Chorny an unlikely and involuntary hero. Two years later, he has sacrificed most of his hero status as well as his marriage, on the altar of his fixation with the idea that there may be survivors in places other than the Moscow metro. As an authorised ‘stalker’, that peculiar breed of soldier who braves the poisoned surface in search of relics and resources, he periodically ventures into the contaminated outdoors carrying his shortwave communication radio to try to pick up signals from the hypothetical pockets of other survivors, and to send messages of his own. Day after day, he sends his missives into the void, and day after day, he is met with the void’s majestic indifference. No signal answered, but then again, hope, like a stubborn weed, is resilient to reason. When one of the main characters from “Metro 2034” looks him up at his home station, Artyom’s life changes completely.

In this volume, Glukhovsky settles the final score with his creation. It is brutal, not merely in terms of violence, but also in terms of honesty and the most unsparing truth. He tears the curtain from the façade that sustains those huddled in the tunnels and reveals the unfathomable and ugly machinery of power whose gears grind relentlessly upon the backs of humanity. While Artyom’s exploits bring him closer to the truth, he finds that the price of revelation is nothing less than his sanity and that of his companions. In an almost melodramatic way, Glukhovsky lays bare the futility in humanity’s battle over ideologies and social trifles. He mocks the shallowness of fascism by demonstrating how easy it is for a fascist regime to shift the population’s hatred from one arbitrary target to the next. He ridicules mankind’s incurable irrationality and disdain for knowledge and reasoned thought. When shown a truth that would topple their cherished certainties, they flee from it as from the plague. When pressed to rise against their own suffering, they clutch their chains all the tighter. It is a ruthless indictment, a portrait of humanity painted with scathing accuracy and a certain tragic affection.

In short, Dmitry Glukhovsky sketches a most unflattering portrait of a species that will willingly choose destruction over construction and despair over hope. Artyom learns that people would rather cling to a familiar lie than extend a trembling hand toward an unsettling truth. For them, comfort lies not in enlightenment, but in the quiet, stubborn shadows of their accustomed illusions.

“Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings.” Etienne de la Boétie.

Taking a step back, one might observe that “Metro 2035” constitutes the philosophical battleground between Niccolo Machiavelli’s Prince and Etienne de la Boétie’s insubordinate subject. The ultimate ruler of the Metro-world, portrayed as some sort of solitary Bilderberg Group, is a decisively Machiavellian persona, operating through a carefully curated mixture of violence and the illusion of protection. Artyom, by contrast, emerges as the lone voice of candour, the innocent child daring to cry that the emperor is, in fact, naked.

Unfortunately, Glukhovsky’s analysis is neither novel nor particularly deep. To a reader with an advanced intellectual capacity, the book may serve as a reminder that the political landscape is more complex and the power structures of society more convoluted than meets the eye, but for such readers there is better literature to reach for. To the lesser thinker, the book may appear to confirm several existing conspiracy theories and lead to an even looser grip of reality.

Though, the Metro-series is written as a trilogy where both the setting in the Moscow metro system and the characters are recurring and refer to events in previous volumes, each book strikes a distinctly different note. In this final instalment, the political intrigue, which lent “Metro 2033” such gravity yet was conspicuously absent from “Metro 2034”, returns in full force. However, the murky, menacing threat of nameless mutants and shadowy beasts, which haunted the earlier volumes, has receded into the background, leaving the eerie atmosphere markedly diminished. This third instalment is possibly the most action-packed of the three, but that does not necessarily make it the best.

Before I embarked on this journey into the underground, a good friend of mine advised me to read the first book but forfeit the remaining two. I cannot say I did not enjoy Metro 2035, but still I sometimes think that maybe I should have listened.