The Right to Use Force (Russian: Право на силу) is a novel that is part of the Universe of Metro 2033, a long-running series of short stories, novellas and novels written by different authors, all set in the world of Metro. The Right to Use Force, written by Russian author Denis Shabalov, was originally published in August of 2012. Although there is currently no English version of the book, The Right to Use Force has been translated into one other Slavic language - Polish. The novel was translated to Polish by Paweł Podmiotko and published in Poland on the 2nd of March, 2016.
Shabalov's first novel was one of the relatively early entries in the Universe to leave the confines of Moscow and set its action deeper in Russia, in this case the chosen location being a town in Penza Oblast that is also the writer's birthplace. It has been described as a very "manly" tale, praised for its attention to tactical/field detail and criticised for its frequent use of footnotes. It is the first in Shabalov's trilogy, followed by The Right to Life.
Synopsis
Serdobsk is a town in the middle part of European Russia. Now divided into 2 main groups, a fraction of Serdobsk's pre-war population managed to survive the Beginning - the first smaller one is made up of mostly military men, while the second larger community of former civilians is led by Sergey Petrovich Rodionov (a Spetsnaz GRU colonel) and inhabits the fallout shelter hidden beneath the town's main railway station building. Although this part of the Povolzhye region did not experience the predicted nuclear winter, temperatures in the summer months rarely reached even 10°C in the first few years after the war as the sky was veiled by a grey fog and ash from the bombings still floated in the air. A gradual greenhouse effect followed, due to holes in the ozone layer that were widened by the thermonuclear warfare, causing peak temperatures to rise to as much as 40°C by the year 2033, whilst winters continue to be extreme with numbers as low as -40°C.
Danila Olegovich Dobrynin is a 21 year old partially mutated young man. His trusted brother-in-arms and childhood friend is 19 year old Sasha Popovich. They live in Rodionov's post-apocalyptic society, where polygyny and other patriarchal laws reign. Trained from a young age using tested special forces methods, they are an inseparable duo of explorer-warriors. Along with a number of other such small yet effective teams, they make up the shelter's cadre of experienced stalkers. They lead a risky lifestyle consisting of scavenging expeditions to the town's irradiated and mutant-infested surface, in addition to fulfilling duties expected of the shelter's male population in general. When a convoy of vehicles arrives secretly in Serdobsk, Danila and his comrade are sent on a reconnaissance mission leading to a chain of events that will change their lives forever.
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