Metro 2033 is a dense, thoughtful and colorful novel, a wonderful blend of science fiction, horror, and arguably even fantasy. Can Artyom get to Polis and save his friends and family at VDNKh? A trip that, before the war, would have taken 1/2 hour now takes days, possibly weeks. Furthermore, he must pass through a number of different faction territories, and he does not possess a passport or travel papers. The tunnels between stations are dark and dangerous, filled with terrors both natural and unnatural, and traveling alone is dangerous enough for an experienced warrior, much more so for the naive Artyom. Since he was a small child before the war, Artyom has not traveled anywhere outside of VDNKh. Hunter plans to perform reconnaissance on the Dark Ones’ home above ground, and tasks Artyom to travel to the distant collection of stations known as “Polis,” where Hunter has allies who can help fight the supernatural threat. He finds an unexpected ally when a stranger named Hunter arrives, a seasoned warrior who believes that the Dark Ones can and must be defeated. Artyom’s adoptive father Sukhoi has given up all hope of survival, but Artyom has not. In recent weeks, the station has been repeatedly attacked by beings known only as Dark Ones, humanoids that can release psychic attacks that devastate the sanity of the defenders. The novel follows quest of a young man named Artyom, a nearly lifelong resident of the outlying metro station VDNKh. And one of these new forms of life poses a greater threat than all of the others… The surface is now uninhabitable to humans, but new and deadly forms of life have taken its place. Though human beings have literally wiped themselves from the face of the Earth, they continue to make the same mistakes, forming violent factions that strive for power and control. Which, incidentally, was in fact built with the nuclear holocaust in mind. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, in which the only known survivors - tens of thousands of them - of a devastating war in 2013 now live in the massive underground metro. Both were inspired by the quite remarkable novel Metro 2033 (2005), by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The videogame - actually, videogames - are Metro 2033 (2010), and its sequel, Metro: Last Light (2013).

It’s a pretty rare occurrence when a videogame inspires and moves me enough to read a book, but it happened recently.

Metro 2033 by dmitry glukhovsky