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I Am Legend

Richard Matheson

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What Members Thought

Apr 19, 2010 Fey rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, on-my-bookshelf, apocalyptic, reviewed, sfx-book-club, horror, bought-new

It's 1976, and the world's population has been wiped out by an unknown affliction. Robert Neville is the last man alive. Immune to the plague by some trick of fate, he is left alone in the world, with nothing but an unescapable will to continue living.

After dark, the dead population come to stand outside Neville's boarded up home, to taunt and torment him. He keeps them away with garlic, crosses and mirrors, lest they come after his blood. During the day he goes through houses staking the peopl It's 1976, and the world's population has been wiped out by an unknown affliction. Robert Neville is the last man alive. Immune to the plague by some trick of fate, he is left alone in the world, with nothing but an unescapable will to continue living.

After dark, the dead population come to stand outside Neville's boarded up home, to taunt and torment him. He keeps them away with garlic, crosses and mirrors, lest they come after his blood. During the day he goes through houses staking the people as they lie comatose in their beds. His nights are sleepless, and his days are bleak and lonely. Eventually he turns to investigating the disease, mainly as something to do, basically teaching himself the biology from scratch, and trying to bring scientific reason to vampirism.

Matheson's writing is really just amazing. For the majority of the book, Neville is entirely alone, just doing whatever is necessary to survive, and the majority of the dialogue is just Nevilles own crazy internal thoughts. And for that to continue for so long, and yet to be the complete opposite of boring.. it was exciting. It's so good in fact, that I read the entire book in one go, and I don't often do that.

I had previously seen the movie (the Will Smith version), which I actually liked very much, don't flame me! But this book of course is quite different. And then someone had explained the plot of the book to me, after I saw the movie, but despite this, I still found so much in the book that was just unexpected.

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Additional Warning: If reading the new SF Masterworks edition, Do not read the introduction before the book, it's a bit too spoilerific, it would have been better at the end of the book as a review. ...more

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Sep 16, 2011 Erich Franz Linner-Guzmann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fable, horror, mystery, romane, animal, post-apocalyptic, nordamerika, dystopian, drug, favourite

The best ending line of any book I have ever read.

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Mar 26, 2011 Todd rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf-masterworks

Don't expect Will Smith's I Am Legend if you read Richard Matheson's original 1954 novel. As with any novel-to-film adaptation, directors take poetic license. Though the film holds up on its own, it's no match for the novel.

Robert Neville is the only human left in a post-apocalytic world inhabited by vampires. To survice, he locks himself in a boarded, locked and garlic-filled home at night, and stalks around killing the vampires by day. While the novel has vampires---a horror staple---the novel ...more

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Jan 30, 2011 ShaiJai rated it really liked it

"Here he was with no future and a virtually hopeless present. Still plodding on."

In a unique and scientific take on the vampire myth, the author keeps you interested enough to the very end, as you drink, discover, and plod along with the last man standing. Somehow I found the latest movie version of this book to be more compelling and interesting, but these stories were so different that to give them the same title really was not fitting. The stories even ended in a completely different light. N ...more

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