The world in the subway is ruthless and only slightly resembles life as we know it. The struggle for survival pushes man into the darkest recesses of human nature. The inhabitants of Kiev prove that they can exist even underground, in a crowded place, without sufficiently good-quality food and space.
The state of affairs
Only tunnels protect against deadly radiation and are suitable for settlement, while residents do not have access to one of the metro lines – all passages have been filled in. Moreover, this is not the only unexplained circumstance. The second mystery is the missing page in all copies of the Flora botanical atlas . It is not known whether these anomalies are related or what caused them. The atmosphere is exacerbated by stalkers investigating the state of the surface. During one of the missions, they find an unknown man in a damaged protective suit. The man cannot remember anything, and the only person who seems to recognize him is Elza, a mentally ill girl.
Extract
Theoretically, such an expressive setting does not need much to come to life in the reader’s imagination – at the outset it is dark, dark and dangerous. And yet in the red variantI felt like I was in my own room, on a comfortable armchair and daylight enveloped me. It was not only the meager number of unsophisticated descriptions that pulled me out of the “session”, but above all the naive and shallow logic of the entire story. While the idea has great potential, it fails and disappoints with each new page. All the strengths are revealed at the very beginning and hardly ever evolve until the very end of the book. Our level of information does not increase gradually – we learn the whole truth in the penultimate pages of the novel. Structure and story-building is 70% introduction, 15% middle of the action and 15% ending. I am not saying that there is only one correct pace pattern – but the one used in the red variantthis is a bad move. As a reader, I could not get involved in the fate of the heroes, and the whole thing dragged on me mercilessly.
Concrete
The city authorities cannot ignore the newcomer found on the surface – their only hope to learn something about him is Elza. Everyone believes that if they heal the girl, she will tell them who the strange man is. The best candidate for crossing to the last subway station and finding the quack turns out to be the child’s teacher Jon. As I suppose, the author of the book planned an agile plot twist – at first he warmed our curiosity, then cooled it down without giving any clues or information, only to explain what happened at the very end. On the front pages, Sergey Niedorub highlights important elements that will definitely have an impact on the course of the action, and then he does not give any hints! We go on a tedious mission with the heroes, and on the way we don’t even have space to make our own guesses. Just in case, so that none of us will figure out what the ending is, it’s better to hold on to the reader and only then reveal the cards. Finally, Jon reaches the very end of the subway and luckily connects all the mysteries of the Kiev underground.
Sedno
Satysfakcja z zakończenia na pewno rośnie, jeżeli autor kieruje czytelnikiem i po kolei naprowadza go na różne tropy. Tutaj tego zabrakło. A i samo rozwiązanie zagadki jest jednym z tych bardziej nielogicznych, naiwnych i mało wiarygodnych. Fabuła zdecydowanie miała duży potencjał i sięgając po Czerwony wariant, zawyżyłam swoje oczekiwania. Tym boleśniejsze jest przyznanie, że nawet atmosfera nie rekompensuje tam braków fabularnych. Nie liznęłam choćby odrobiny mistycyzmu i tajemniczości obecnych w innych książkach z tego uniwersum. Kolejny cios to kreacja bohaterów, o których nie wiemy praktycznie nic – nie mają osobowości, nie można się z nimi utożsamić. Postacie zarówno po metrze, jak i po powierzchni poruszały się bez najmniejszych trudności! Jakby wcale nie żyły w postapokaliptycznym świecie! Jedyny plus, który mogę wskazać, to oddział stalkerów o nazwie „Ptaki” – najmocniejszy punkt całej książki.
