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Metro 2033 cover art

Metro 2033

By: Dmitry Glukhovsky
Narrated by: Rupert Degas
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Summary

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct and the half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind, but the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory.

Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth, living in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters, or the need to repulse enemy incursion.

VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line, one of the Metro's best stations and secure. But a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro to alert everyone to the danger and to get help. He holds the future of his station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity.

©2007 Dmitry Glukhovsky (P)2012 Orion Publishing Group

What listeners say about Metro 2033

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  • 2 Stars
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Performance
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  • 2 Stars
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Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Thrilling and Engaging

Metro 2033 really is like nothing I've ever read/heard before, and the plot never follows your expectations. There are multitude of characters, and no matter how briefly they appear, you get the sense that they are beings in their own rights, who have full lives that happen to momentarily interconnect with Artyom's, as opposed to being literary devices to serve the plot's goals - something I have rarely come across. I've never had such a curiousity towards so many characters, and when you leave one behind, you are torn between excitement for the plot advancement and a sort of "wait, I want to learn more about this guy!".



The is a lot of backstory and explanatory asides in Metro 2033, particularly in the early chapters, however it never feels dull or slow, and it does really help to set the scene. I loved hearing about the different politics and religions that are found at each station, as you could really feel the amount of thought and skill that has been put in to making each station as unique as each character.



Rupert Degas should be praised for being an absolute joy to listen to. Having absolutely no familiarity with Russian, and seeing things like "VDNKh" in the blurb, I was worried that I would get lost in all the names and places, but Rupert is clear and enunciate. Furthermore he makes each character's voice distinct, so that you can easily tell who is speaking, without having to rely on "said ...." markers.



My only tiny gripe is that it was not very scary, as I was expecting - however this might be that the friend who recommended it to me over-hyped this aspect in an effort to get me to read/listen to his favourite book.



On the whole - an engaging and fascinating book full of rich detail that is incredibly well read. I highly recommend.

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81 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Absolutely Outstanding

What a great book this is,

It'll give you chills and you'll dream about the heart pounding terrifying moments. Not a moment of rest from the amazing story always pacing ahead with the steady feeling of growth of the main character and with absolut absence of repetition. Not two scenes are alike and every scene is unique in its originality, you'll never get bored and will always want to get to the next chapter because you know that something amazing will happen, but at the same time you'll regret getting to the end of the chapter you're at because it is so very entertaining. Some scenes will freeze the blood in your veins.
The narrator is just perfect as well.

Get this a-book, you'll thank me later.

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25 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A riot of imagination!

I had already read the book when I decided to pick up the audiobook. I'm relatively new to the audiobook world and decided that a story I was already familiar with was a good idea so that I could listen to it while doing work. I made the right decision. It was like hearing a story I loved in a completely different way all over again. I have listened to Librivox audiobooks before mainly so the idea of casts of characters and, particularly in this case, proper pronunciations and accents blew me away.

Cannot recommend both the book and this recording of it enough. Buy it for the story, stay for the reading quality.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Couldn't get through

The concept is very interesting, world is nicely structured and is full of interesting details. But the story is slow paced and very fragmented. The protagonist travels from one situation to another and encounters different kind of people. Writer's focus seems to be presenting different kinds of political and ideological views with as wide spectrum as possible. Than kind of makes them quite stereotypical: nazis are evil and religious people nutcases etc.

Jumping from one encounter and episode to another made the story too slack for my taste, so I stopped listening after about 2/3.

Although I might give it another chance some day.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • P
  • 17-05-17

slow starter

I loved this, but nearly didn't get past the half way mark, very slow starter

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Of two minds

First off, download a map of the moscow metro in English and have a look at some photographs of the Metro Stations. This is the only way to get an understanding of how vast the Moscow metro is and a feel for what the stations are like. However without being able to see the writtten names of the stations that our protagonist passes through, it is very difficult to follow his quest on the map. Due to the Russian pronunciation, It took me ages of pause & rewind to figure out which was his home station. Something sounding like Veedee En Kah turned out to be the station called VDNKH and so it went with many of the station names.

The premise of this book is fascinating, a nuclear war has wiped out humanity and the survivors of Moscow have fled under ground to the tunnels of the metro system. Above ground, strange mutations have occured due to the nuclear devastation and in some areas of the metro these frightening creatures are getting through, threatening life in the tunnel systems and a young hero is drawn into a quest through the vast tunnels in order to save the last of humanity. Unfortunately this turns out to be a surprisingly monotonous listen, no fault of Rupert Degas though, who does a stellar job. The writing style is just incredibly repetitive. Enter a new tunnel, strange things happen, arrive at a station, meet some inhabitants, long, drawn out converstions that rarely add to the plot, move on to the next tunnel and more of the same .A very linear story, with very surprisingly little action and one dimensional characters. Xbox 101, The twist at the end however, is brilliant and throws the novel into a whole new light. It stayed with me for a long time after.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

This far outweighs the game

amazing storytelling to follow an excellent story. The game does no Justice compared to this

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good, post apocalyptic fun - Russian style

And by that I mean it goes weird and bleak! Well written, good characters, some of which I wish had lingered longer. I left the novel with a claustrophobic feeling of tunnels burried deep.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Seems simple minded, massochistic & repititive...

I started this greatly anticipating something different and thinking the original conceit was interesting. I am about two thirds through it and about to ask for my credit back and bill someone for my time. Degas is a wonderful narrator except for what seems a lazy choice here to have all the characters speaking in a Russian accent - as if Russians speaking Russian would hear each other as heavily accented Bond villains. As the book went on, for description after description of the main character acting like an utter idiot and being terrified of the dark, even Degas, whom I greatly admire, began to irritate me. The last bit I listened to was a prolonged explanation by the protagonist of what an echo is just before trying to attack it with a stick and then, for the umpteenth time, stumbling to another metro station, wondering why he had been afraid, and finding yet another clichéd mini civilization a couple of hundred yards down the track from the last one. Remember this is set in 2033 but all learning, memory of the world above and critical thought have given way to superstition and simple-mindedness and an utter lack of curiosity as the last few people left alive seem to be the least intelligent who ever lived and who observe things like the direction rules of which way to travel in which parallel tunnel and fear they will be attacked by monsters if they walk the wrong way. These people have survived nuclear war and are afraid of the supernatural? Please! Maybe the author thought it would be a great idea to have the story keep on repeating the same thoughts and situations like the eternal metro journey, but this reader at least begs to differ. I willed this to be good after all the glowing reviews, but, although the tag line reads "A world in darkness, a single hope", I have given up hope and the only light at the end of the tunnel is that I have an off switch and I can go and read something more cheerful and happy-go-lucky like Dostoyevsky or more exciting and eventful like Proust.This book proves that just because something is gloomy and translated does not mean it is good.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Great narration but...

I didn't get the story. I'm not sure if it's just me but it seemed to be a jumble of events clumsily coming together and by 9hrs in I was lost. The narration by Rupert Degas is as fantastic as ever. He is by far and away my favourite narrator and his Russian accents are brilliant.

In short, great performance but poor story. I returned it!

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5 people found this helpful