METRO 2034. The sequel to Metro 2033: English language, American Edition (METRO by Dmitry Glukhovsky Book 2) Kindle Edition

I first discovered Dmitry Glukhovsky’s METRO series through a video game play on youtube. My son, knowing my love for all things apocalyptic, showed me Let's Play Metro Last Light - Part 1 - In The Beginning… by Christopher Odd. I loved the first video and decided to look into the game. The game was based on a series of novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The first two novels were available in English and had audio book versions. The novella which links the first and second book is available in English but has no audio book version. Absolutely no debate on purchasing the audio books.The universe METRO builds begins in our world. The cold war is over. The USSR is a thing of the past although it’s shadow lingers over modern day Russia. The main character, Artyom, is a young adult. He was born before the event but only has very few and fragmented memories of it. On the day of the event, he and his mother were visiting a park close to a metro station. That is why they survived. The metro stations could be sealed to stop contaminants from coming in (the metro was designed and built during the USSR period). Artyom and his mother make it into the metro and past the doors before they are sealed.The metro develops into a new society. As time goes on, the different lines or branches develop different political ideologies. Some stations are more desirable than others, some have more resources, some have ways to grow food underground, some have access to uncontaminated water. Before long treaties are made, broken and fighting begins. The metro is no longer one system but a collection of city states that are connected by dark tunnels.What is in the tunnels is the mystery that lies at the heart of the METRO 2033 book. Traveling even a few hundred meters into the tunnels can be dangerous. Some of the dangers are defined; hordes of rats, mutated life forms that got into the tunnels from above, marauding humans who prey on their own kind. Some of the dangers are undefined. People, groups of people and caravans, evenly armed ones disappear without a trace, without a sound and no sign of struggles. The tunnel dwellers have dubbed the cause of these disappearances as the “Dark Ones”.The website [...] has a virtual tour of all the stations mentioned in the book. It is a wonderful way to connect the descriptions of severely damaged places with what they looked like in reality. Since the story begins in our reality, the photos are showing the reality of the Metro universe before the nuclear event.METRO 2033 is the quest Artyom undertakes to save the entire Metro system. He is tasked with this by a mysterious man who is only referred to as “Hunter”. There is a time element to the quest. As in life in 2016, life in post-apocalypse 2033 does not go as planned. Artyom tours, sometimes unwillingly, many of the various city-states that make up the Metro. It is a fascinating trip. The characters are real. The various ideologies of the city-states are believable. The unknowns in the dark tunnels ratchet up the suspense to terrifying levels. By the end of the book, I was deeply impressed by the world the author created and how much I came to care about the characters in it.METRO 2033: The Gospel According to Artyom is a bridge to METRO 2034. It is only twenty-seven pages but well worth the $2.99 price. Artyom illustrates the consequences of the events the ended METRO 2033. But this short piece also gives significant background into his life before and during the apocalyptic event. It really is worth the price.METRO 2034 begins not long after the end of METRO 2033. The main characters are the “Hunter” from the first book, a man called Homer who believes it is his vocation to write a history and chronicle of the Metro, and a teenage girl named Sasha who has been recently orphaned. Sasha’s father used to be one of the dictator’s of a Metro city-state until he and the girl were banished to an area that had little to no hope of survival. They did survive. Her father managed to live long enough for her to mature and learn to defend herself before his death. Hunter, Homer and Sasha come together in a collision of missions, Sasha’s to survive, Hunter and Homer to find out what happened to a station that no longer broadcasts or sends runners with news. Artyom does not have a large part in this story. He does not make an appearance until Chapter 10. Yet everything that is happening is a consequence of his actions in METRO 2033. The threat this time is not the Dark Ones. It is something much worse and something almost impossible to stop. As with the first book, the characters are fantastic and I grew to care about them. The action is non-stop.The audiobooks of METRO 2033 and METRO 2034 are narrated by Rupert Degas. He is fantastic. His accent for the Russian speakers if marvelous. When simply narrating, not the dialogue, he has a very clear voice with an English accent. His female voices are very well done. I have since added several of his titles to my wish list.The last book in the series METRO 2035 has not been released in English yet. I wonder if a social media campaign of begging to the author could help facilitate that happening.

This review is for Metro 2034 written by Dmitry Glukhovsky.I loved Metro 2033 and the video games based on these novels.First off I should say that if you played the video games, this book has nothing to do with those video games other than it is set in the same Universe and in the same Moscow Metro underground a year after the events of Metro 2033.The events of the second video game, 'Metro 2033' are based on the novel 'Metro 2035.'PLOT: Homer is an aging man who used to work in the subway's before the war. He is stationed in a troubled section of the Metro. A few stations away, strange things are happening and communications have been lost. Soldiers sent out do not return.A large stranger has recently shown up to defend the station and he seems to defer to nobody. Half of his face is badly mutilated and he seems to be an almost inhuman killing machine. He is cold and distant to everyone. We find out that this person is 'Hunter'...the very same person who gives Artyom his mission in 'Metro 2033'. Hunter is also believed to be dead.For reasons known to himself, he chooses Homer to go with him on a scouting mission to find out what is going on in the Metro.Homer, who has named himself after the Greek writer, believes it his job to write the story of Hunter and a teenage girl they come across during their mission. The teenage girl believes that Hunter needs her to help bring him back to humanity. Hunter believes it his job to save Metro from total destruction.COMMENTS: 'Metro 2034' is shorter than 'Metro 2033.'The scope is much smaller and the story is confined to a much smaller area of the Metro. It basically takes place in a southern part in an area of about a half dozen or so stations.The story slows a bit in the second half as the author likes to philosophize from time to time. I actually enjoyed the first half at least as much as the first book. The first half is very mysterious and until I understood what was going on I didn't want to put it down.I liked that 'Hunter' was chosen as a main character. He is far more interesting than Artyom was in 'Metro 2033.' The stalkers are naturally more interesting characters as they are the ones that go out exploring. Artyom is just your basic fantasy story innocent boy who turns hero.Artyom doesn't do a whole lot in this book. In fact, instead of being a hero, he is actually looked down upon as nobody believes his story about what happened in the previous book.COMMENTS/RECOMMENDATIONS: I'm giving this book 4 stars. It's not as good as Metro 2033 nor is it as detailed but it is still a good story.If you are like me and despise today's politically correct world, then the Metro series is for you. This is a story written by a Russian that takes place in Russia. There is no diversity for the sake of diversity. There are no 100 pound little girl superheros who can beat the .... out of any man two to three times her size. There are no LBGT characters just to prove the writer believes in tolerance. Not every white male is a villain or despicable character. You get the picture. OK....so maybe it's late and I'm writing this after a bad day.

If you want the cover to match 2033 this is the one. Not sure why amazon shows a different picture though. Its translated fine but theres a bunch of weird parts like splitting words "sup-rised, branch-ing" stuff like that. Occasionally a paragraph ends with the word that shouldve started the next one so it might not make sense

Don't come to metro 2034 expecting another high octane dash around the Moscow underground, as our eponymous hero escapes one disaster after another. This is a far slower paced novel than its predecessor. Not to say that there is no action, there's still plenty of that but there are significant pauses between them. The emphasis this time is not on the young hero on a traditional quest to save the world (metro) but on an older man trying to make sense of and justify his existence. Whilst being dragged around the metro by events he can barely comprehend, in the company of people he doesn't understand, our new 'hero', chronicles the old world of Moscow and the new world of the metro. In the first book of the series there was much examination of social structures familiar to the reader, in the sequel, the philosophing is more exsenstential. The themes are geared more towards an individuals and humanities place in the history of the universe. This may sound as if it gets very heavy in the narrative, but due to the way the novel is structured, these areas, while frequent, tend towards short bursts that tend not to break the flow to much. In similarities to its predecessor, the author concentrates on the development of his few central characters to the detriment of secondaries. This occasionally jars as people act in ways that can be difficult to work out their motivation, and are very obviously just plot devices to allow progression from point A to point B. In particular the introduction later in the novel of someone who could of been an interesting foil as an anti hero but remains almost unrealised right to the end. The brief return of the original hero is also 'off' as he seems to be written with a different personality. However, despite these criticisms, this is still a strong novel that will feel familiar enough with readers of the first and allows the author to explore and expand the story to the people and places of the metro.

Its feels stand alone against the games stories, Artyom features very little, but instead an old character returns, Hunter, and the journey from Sevastopol through a radioactive and mind breaking hell is done well.The older character Homer really does feel like the stories biographer, and his constant questioning of his purpose and decisions feels right, the setting really is dank and suffocating. The path left or right is a sweaty panicky moment. Every tunnel and sketchy station feels dangerous.I liked it.

Metro 2034 really does feel like a different book to 2033, but in the same location, instead of following the story of one person, it follows the lives of a series of characters at the same time, swapping between them in the same chapter.Despite this, the story is great, the world building is great and its a great book.However, my biggest concern here is the poor print quality. 3 page 'leaves' fell out whilst reading the book, and there was an ink smudge on about 20 pages (although not in the way of the text).

I enjoyed it, sadly there was no Artyom but it does tie the first and last books together so I would read it before the last book.Nice to see more of Hunter and to meet Homer but I prefer Hunter as he is in the first book, the hero fighting ceaselessly for the good of all the Metro; "If not us, then who"

Got this for a friend, that is very much into the whole post-apocalyptic scene, with a mix of science fiction.The book is set Moscow, Russia, inside the Metro, where people are surviving from the blast of a world nuclear disaster.He enjoyed reading the books, and sped through the whole series like a man on a mission. Definitely recommends if this is your kind of read.