I hesitated for a long time before picking up this book, because I have mixed feelings about Dmitry Glukhovsky, shaped by his Metro series. On the one hand, it’s genuinely a very interesting concept and execution; on the other, while I liked the first novel, Metro 2033, the second—and especially the third—mostly surprised me, and even disappointed me.
And even though I’d heard plenty of feedback about Outpost, I only got around to it after the war with Ukraine began, when almost everyone started saying that Glukhovsky had “seen it all coming” back then. That’s when I got genuinely curious: what exactly was it that Dmitry Glukhovsky supposedly predicted?
The novel opens by showing us a small settlement near a bridge across the Volga, by what used to be Yaroslavl. And now this is the very border of the state. Because at some point, a war broke out in the country, the mutiny was put down, but everything beyond the Volga can no longer be called inhabitable land, since some kind of weapon made it unfit for life. And the people at the outpost on the border are tasked with watching this single route into the cursed lands—just in case, so that no kind of nastiness crawls out of there.
And the lion’s share of the first volume is taken up by a description of life in this settlement—the remnants of all of Yaroslavl, where, judging by the description, only a few dozen residents are left alive, scraping by, somehow living, and even raising children. But the way this everyday grind is described, in my opinion, is drawn out too much. The plot moves very slowly, and all these abundant domestic details feel depressing at first.
People are just living their lives; the young are bored stiff; and then some bold, rowdy young Cossacks show up from the capital to figure out what’s been going on out here near the border after years of calm. It feels like nothing much is happening—just the dreariness and hopelessness of a post-apocalyptic world.
But then the coiled spring starts to unwind: events pick up fast, even unexpectedly, and little by little a puzzle comes together—unknown details about the last civil war. And by the end of the volume you don’t want to put it down. Though it also ends right at the most interesting moment. You already get what the hook is, and you want to keep going—because a new threat (or not quite a new one?) has come to the Empire, and it’s threatening both the capital and the Tsar-Father himself (yes, yes: after the civil war the country went back to a monarchy).
In the second volume, things pick up, but at times the rhythm abruptly falls apart—like in the section about the Moscow life of one of the secondary characters, a ballerina. And it’s clear that through her the author wanted to show the everyday life of this new Muscovy, which has shrunk down to a small “patch.” Yaroslavl, with its outpost on the border of the current state, is closer to Moscow than Moscow is to St. Petersburg. At the same time, there are mentions of Cossack raids into the Caucasus, which means it’s still within the zone of reasonable habitation. But as for what’s going on with the second capital—not a word.
And that’s why the suddenly emerging threat turns out to be extremely dangerous: it’s not even that far away, even on foot. Especially if you weren’t prepared for things to go that way.
The book does an excellent job of showing what a war against your own people can lead to—and how quickly a state can slide downhill if it sees enemies everywhere. A system built on silencing and punishing people for the truth inevitably turns into something that devours itself. Because the truth will be denied until the very last moment, when it’s already too late to do anything. In that sense, with this book Glukhovsky anticipated what we can now see with our own eyes in modern Russia, Belarus, and other states where the authorities try by hook or by crook to hide the real state of affairs—imposing an invented world and invented ideals on society. And anyone who doubts it gets branded an enemy of the people, shot, or, at best, thrown into a dungeon. And all the filth shown here feels even worse because you can see that it’s not fiction at all—it’s around us right now. That’s exactly why people say about the novel that “he described all of this in advance.”
As for the world of the novel itself: overall, within the given premise about the “illness” described (let’s call it that, so I don’t spoil anything), it feels more or less coherent. I do have questions, but for most of them I can come up with answers that make sense within the logic of that world.
The only real misstep is the mechanism by which the infection spreads. Because that “plague” is, in essence, self-annihilating. The infected behave in a way that, on the one hand, passes the infection on—but on the other hand, very quickly destroys them. Their behavior isn’t designed for long-term existence; their “life cycle” is, at most, a few days unless they’re supported from the outside. And that’s why it’s unclear how this infection could have survived for twenty postwar years without artificial replenishment. And the world as shown gives no answer to the question of who could have “cultivated” these carriers, and how. Because when a carrier dies—simply due to the nature of how this “illness” is transmitted—the disease disappears. A dead person can’t pass it on. In theory, I can come up with one way this could be done deliberately, but it’s far too complicated. And I believe in Occam’s razor.
The ending, though, didn’t disappoint me. I saw it coming, and it felt like the most logical outcome within the rules of the game as they’re laid out. Although certain individuals still acted way too recklessly, especially knowing the nature of the illness—basically, they brought it on themselves. Meanwhile, deviations in how the illness behaves get used actively for the plot, but they’re never explained.
One more thing worth highlighting: the author isn’t afraid to show the horror of the whole situation, including by playing the children card in all this chaos. It’s always very hard for me to read about children in a war or apocalypse, and this was no exception. But in this novel it fit the point—to show just how much the system dehumanizes its society, and how that society, with its brainwashed minds, turns into executioners.
It’s also worth saying separately a few words about the imperial mindset—about what people are willing to do, and what they’re willing to sacrifice, for the sake of faith in their own greatness and in a wise tsar. Everyone lies, everyone is an enemy, and the tsar—he’s good, he’s holy. And for one bad word about him—smash your face in and kill you. Even if it turns out that the tsar is exactly the reason for all the misery. Both the old one and the new one—unwilling to hear the truth.
I don’t think Dmitry Glukhovsky anticipated what was coming. I think he was simply describing what had already been in society for many years—something that won’t let the people go, that lives on in their hearts, but is constantly being fed and raised up out of the darkness for the benefit of those in power. And the strength here isn’t so much that Glukhovsky showed the ugliness of self-aggrandizement and the imperial mindset, but that with his book he points out—and even warns—how this darkness, cultivated to please the authorities, ends up again and again swallowing both society itself and the very power that let the genie out of the bottle.
P.S. An article about this book would be incomplete if I didn’t mention that the current authorities have also declared Dmitry Glukhovsky an enemy and a persona non grata in his own country. And Outpost has more or less vanished from sale—and where it’s still available, it’s sometimes hidden behind a faceless cover and a “blurb” stating that this is the work of a “foreign agent.” It would be funny if it weren’t terrifying.
My rating: 4.25/5 for both volumes
