u/lordkyrillion

I used to be a hardcore Metro fan as a teen. Started from the og first game, then played Last Light, then bought the first book and got hooked on the universe. I watched a lot of lore videos on YouTube. One of them mentioned skaven - a hybrid human-rat race of mutated people which appeared after some stations were invaded by giant rats in 2014 (Artyom's mom actually died during the rat attack on Timiryazevskaya and gave him to Suhoi before passing). Lots of people were killed, stations were cut off from the rest of the metro with explosives and some fortunate enough individuals mutated into skaven.

Me being a massive fucking furry and khajiit enjoyer was absolutely hooked by the idea and the next day i went to my nearest "Bukvoed" and bought the thing that introduced skaven to the lore - "A Juliet with no name" on my pocket money. It was the first expanded universe book i read - in case you don't know back in early 2010 Glukhovsky and his publisher collaborated to create a project of extended Metro universe in which other authors basically submitted their fanfiction to Glukhovsky himself (and later his editor). He read it and if he liked it it was published as an official piece of Metro canon. Most of these books were from russian, ukranian and polish writers with a couple of people from othed countries. They usually expand Moscow lore, visit other russian cities and regions 10 years before Exodus or explore into CIS, Ukraine, Poland and occasionally other countries - there are three books about Italy (each of them are great) and one book about the UK. The series went on hiatus in 2021 but giving the war and Glukhovsky having to immigrate Russia because of his stance on it and him working with 4A on 2039 i doubt we'll ever see the Expanded universe again (maybe in Poland only). Sadly none of the books were translated in english, even the Britain one which was supposed to be published in the UK but there were some shaenannigans with British publisher or smth like that.

A week ago i found it in my book closet and decided to give it a try after 10 years especially since now i know more about the universe their name came from and play/run Werewolf: The Apocalypse TTRPG in which my favourite werewolf tribe worships the Spirit of Rat with an ideology based on survival so naturally i felt obligated to read it again.

Yes, they are officially called Skaven and the book even admits it with a cool backstory: one of the infected survivors was a massive Warhammer nerd before the war and spread the name among his kin. I'm not joking.

Skaven society is well-written here. It generally doesn't interact with the larger metro and they are more active on the surface than regular humans due to natural resistance to radiation. They occupy 6 stations and have three factions: the largest is Skaven Station Commonwealth - your run in the mill quazi-democratic metro nation somewhat familiar to Exhibition/VDNH, Northern Emirate which is (shock!) an islamic emeriate. While SSC is mostly inhabited by "russian" skavens or "white skavens", Emirate population are "black skaven" who were tajik and aizerbajani immigrants and "yellow skaven" who were vietnamese (such diversity is explained by their station's close proximity to the market). Eventually black skavens became a majority in the Emirate and became the rulling class while yellow skavens started being treated as lowlives and were enslaved. Mixed-race children are treated as the lowest of the low. There are no white skavens in the Emirate except for occasional stalkers.

Many Emirate slaves try to run away to SSC but SSC has a trading and diplomatic treaty with The Emirate and give escaped slaves away. Those fortunate enough to escape both The Emirate and the SSC cooperated with other pariahs from the skaven community and moved to Altufyevo Station where they founded an anarchist society of stalkers and criminals.

Skaven are classidied not only by their race but by their generation. First gen skavens look almost identical to humans, these guys are the infected ones. The second gen were born skaven and have more rat-like features (the girl on the cover is second gen) and the third gen have even more mutant look but they are very few and all of them are little children.

The only outside group in contact with Skaven are Satanists from Timiryazevskaya station, they border Emirate from the North. Satanists are trying to dig a hole to Hell (i'm not making this shit up btw) and are at war with the Emirate due to religious differences. Polis knows about skaven existence and hires stalkers to capture one for the experiments. The other metro factions treat them as a city legend or a tall tale even.

Not gonna lie - this lore is fucking awesome and unique for the Metro setting. Even though skaven are not the only mutant race in Metro they are by far the most civilized (yup, Metro has mutant races in case you didn't know, there are at least two more of them in Moscow only). And i like how despite bearing the name of rat-boys from FB the only things in common are "rat-people" thing and name.

You probably think this book is dope too, right? WRONG! I remember being a bit dissapointed by it but still liked the book overall because i was a dumb teen and i ate everything with "Metro 2033" or "Dmitriy Glukhovsky" labeled. But reading it now... Boy oh boy it was painful. When i watched this lore video long time ago i imagined some dope adventure involving le cool rat people and the book starts like this. The first protagonist - a stalker by the name Vostok is hired by Polis to capture a skaven. Then he meets a skaven girl named Krysia (the one on the cover), a mix-race child of white skaven stalker and a yellow stalker slave girl. The slave girl was offered to him as a treat by the black skaven, they banged and Krysia was born. Due to the constant racism and bullying young Krysia started spending more time on the surface and managed to get some education on one of the SSC stations and eventually left The Emirate for Bibirevo where she became a stalker and befriended their leader Python (Krysia wasn't a slave or a concubine hence why she stayed in SSC). Krysia is a humanist and has noble ideas she picked up from the books she read at school. While stalking she focuses on books, antiques, toys and other culture related stuff.

Yup. The book turned out to be a mid af love story. I don't like romance but can handle it in books, but oh boy this one is mid. The main reason why it is mid is because of Vostok. Unlike Krisya, he is fucking boring and a literal self-insert Mary Sue. You see - the book was written by three authors: Tatyana Zhivova, Alexy Matveitchev and Pavel Gavrilov. And in the end of the book Vostok's real name revealed to be Pavel. And he looks like Pavel Gavrilov. And Pavel Gavrilov literally wore the same clothes and had the same gun as Vostok at some russian Stalker LARP airsoft game. Vostok has no downsides as a character nor he has an interesting backstory or a strong moral compass like Krisya's. Dude simply self-inserted himself in a Metro universe to bang a rat mutant chick and collabed with his friends to create the said race of rat mutant chicks. And the book ends by Krisya converting into Orthodox Christianity (which is imo is in her character and doesn't come from nowhere so it's fine), marries Vostok, they move away from Metro to some less-irradiated place and have a normal human son (for some fucking reason).

Now after re-reading it i can objectively call it a wasted potential. I was promised a breathtaking adventure of awesome rat guys and gals by some russian Metro lore youtuber whose name i don't remember but was tricked into wasting 600 rubles on a soft cover self insert mary sue love story written by a dude who wants to bang a rat and a woman who also put her own self insert giga awesome bad girl type super-powered mutant OC she originally created for a play-by-post fanmade Metro RPG in Vkontakte she used to play before picking up writing as a minor side character.

This pretty much sums up most of Extended Universe books sadly. There were some really cool ones but many of them were glorified fanfiction with great ideas and disgusting execution.