Dmitry Glukhovsky

Lived Up to the Hype

I've been a fan of the games for a long time and had always meant to get around to reading the books, which can be a little unnerving in case they weren't as good. But this was phenomenal!

The worldbuilding, characters, interactions, and blending of myth and supernatural are all wonderful and I am extremely excited to check out the other books and the extended Metro universe.

It has the feel of a modern Odyssey mixed with the better parts of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, especially with many chapters being their own segment of the journey or experience. In this way it also feels less like a novel and more like many shirt stories and novellas seamlessly sewn together. This is not a criticism or downside from my point of view.

It leaves a lot of questions unanswered and has a lot you just have to go with, but that's genre fiction baybee and this is up there with some of the best.

I have a mighty need to replay the games and checkout the rest of the series.

Performance was brilliant.

Great stuff!… (more)

This book has such a great setting, but the author does not seem to know what to do with it. The scope of the Metro universe is so vast, but the author seems to be afraid of any radical change to it. Despite all the discoveries and dramatic events, the state of the metro universe at the end of the second book is almost identical the beginning of the first book.

Instead, we get treated to more inexplicable "magic". More rebasing of how awful life in the Metro is. More big conflicts that miraculously brings us back to the status quo ante. Yawn.… (more)