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jarrac 's review for:
Metro 2034: försvaret av Sevastopolskaja
by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Dmitry Glukhovsky
SPOILER ALERT!
What a disappointment!
OK, it’s not bad, exactly, but it’s poor compared to Metro 2033 - guess I had very high expectations. My main problem here is the lead characters: for the life of me I could not engage in either of them! I miss the first person singular perspective that Artiom provided us with in the first book, and would have expected that Hunter would fill that place here. Instead we only ever observe him from other people’s perspective, where he is alternatively some kind of a super hero, an enigma, a monster, a legend, or someone who needs to be saved from himself. (Or perhaps all.) It annoys me to no end that it is the only female character in the novel(s) that regards him in the latter perspective, I mean, come on, how cliché is that? And hey, guess who died in the end…
And don’t even get me started on Leonid the singer…
Where the story in the first book was a bit thin too, admittedly, I still found myself deeply intrigued by Artiom’s odyssey through a symbolic hell (the Metro) and his philosophical take on both his mission and the people he encounters. In Metro 2034 everyone seems to be running around all over the place like decapitated chickens, even if they do have a mission too. I mean, get on with it already! The ending, on the other hand, seemed rather rushed to me. Again, admittedly, so was the ending in the first book, but there I was left with a depressing sense of doom: will we ever learn? In this one I felt more like “OK, so they all died, end of story”. :)
Having said all that, still, it was an easy read and some of the characteristics of the post-apocalyptic world of the Metro and its inhabitants still intrigued me. Despite its flaws, I would probably have liked it better if I had not read Metro 2033.
What a disappointment!
OK, it’s not bad, exactly, but it’s poor compared to Metro 2033 - guess I had very high expectations. My main problem here is the lead characters: for the life of me I could not engage in either of them! I miss the first person singular perspective that Artiom provided us with in the first book, and would have expected that Hunter would fill that place here. Instead we only ever observe him from other people’s perspective, where he is alternatively some kind of a super hero, an enigma, a monster, a legend, or someone who needs to be saved from himself. (Or perhaps all.) It annoys me to no end that it is the only female character in the novel(s) that regards him in the latter perspective, I mean, come on, how cliché is that? And hey, guess who died in the end…
And don’t even get me started on Leonid the singer…
Where the story in the first book was a bit thin too, admittedly, I still found myself deeply intrigued by Artiom’s odyssey through a symbolic hell (the Metro) and his philosophical take on both his mission and the people he encounters. In Metro 2034 everyone seems to be running around all over the place like decapitated chickens, even if they do have a mission too. I mean, get on with it already! The ending, on the other hand, seemed rather rushed to me. Again, admittedly, so was the ending in the first book, but there I was left with a depressing sense of doom: will we ever learn? In this one I felt more like “OK, so they all died, end of story”. :)
Having said all that, still, it was an easy read and some of the characteristics of the post-apocalyptic world of the Metro and its inhabitants still intrigued me. Despite its flaws, I would probably have liked it better if I had not read Metro 2033.