I Am Legend

If you are not, as I was/am, a lover of this Vampire genre you should be pleasantly surprised with this book as it is really nothing like youd imagine a vampire book to be. In fact, the bad guys could be any bad guys, for example I could see this as the end of The Road or any other apocaplyse book. I was not one to be drawn to the Vampire stories, other than the old Ann Rice Lestat. I actually notice that some of the tags are for zombies. For all the reasons others have given and the ringing endorsement by Stephen King I finally read the book. It had been sitting in my library for years and I was very satisfied with the story except that it ended quickly and without warning - maybe that was even better because you didnt have the expectation that the end was near. Its quite obvious that those readers who, to put it mildly, express their disappointment in the length of the I Am Legend story are doing so because of the price they paid for the book. Otherwise, the story is the story and thats what they paid to read. These short story books are all priced as if a one story full novel. I too was disappointed in the length because only because the story ended. Actually, I shy away from these little novellas. I really shouldnt as the I am Legend experience proves. Just think of it as the price you pay to read the story. Would you rather pay full price and get a different book with a crap story? I think not. In fact, at least the publisher gave us the other stories; it didnt have to.

Richard Mathesons I Am Legend is a short story about a man named Robert Neville, the last living human on the planet. To complicate things, due to a bacteria there are now vampires running amok who know where he lives. By day he hunts the vampires and kills them while they sleep, by night he inebriates himself and holes up in his house. He finds a dog, and another survivor, but both feed the fire of despair, loneliness and inebriation. And by day the legend grows. Matheson weaves a compelling and frightening tale, and the emotions of Robert Neville are felt by the reader. The ending offers a wonderful twist, and the original story is far better than the recent Will Smith film of the same name. I Am Legend is such an influential story that it almost single-handedly invented the vampire/zombie apocalypse genre that is so prevalent in modern cinema. This specific omnibus also features ten other short stories. A reader unfamiliar with Matheson may pass over them, or read them expecting very little compared to the titular story, but reading them will quickly change the readers mind. Several of the short stories are wonderfully frightening, and they all offer a horrific twist at the end. Highlights include Prey, Madhouse, and Person to Person, although each story is well written and highly entertaining.

Ok, I actually liked all of the movies (

As other reviewers have mentioned, the Kindle edition is missing some of the text from the book. This was obvious in the middle of Chapter 8 and it might explain some of the other issues I had with the story. One of these was that Richard Matheson stated there was more than one type of vampire early on in the story but I found it hard to understand from Nevilles point of view what the differences between them were. The story also jumps around a little and, while Ive seen this in other stories, I found it harder than usual to recognize when this was happening. This might have been the result of missing text. Having said all this, I recommend the novel which clarifies the title in a way that the Will Smith movie did not. The story could also be taken as a metaphor for the process that various groups, comfortable with having the majority, have faced when societal change leaves them in the minority. The book is not a difficult read although in a couple places, Matheson gets a little heavy-handed with his scientific knowledge or research. I read it in about a day.

is a classic horror story. Some regard it as THE classic horror story. Influencing great modern horror writers like Stephen King, its one that will stick with you. I still remember the exact moment I started and finished this book nearly 10 years ago. I was sitting shotgun while my father drove us home from a vacation in Michigan. The AC was too high and I was freezing but couldnt bare to pull my eyes away from this story long enough to ask him to turn it down. I was delighted that I could find a Non-Will Smith cover for this book. As many people know, this story has been adapted into 3 or 4 movies over the years. Word of warning, this is different from the Will Smith movie. If the movie was a standalone with a different name, I would have liked it more. As an adaptation of the book, the movie is seriously lacking. Differences like the fact that the vampires can talk make this story more compelling as the last man on earth isnt alone. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Pros: If youve seen the movie, you can still read the book and be very enthralled. Different enough where you wont know the twists. Great writing. This book made me want to become an author when I was little. Cant say too much more as I dont want to give anything away. Cons: Be careful to purchase the correct copy if youre avoiding the Will Smith movie cover print. The sticker on the back of mine was sticky enough that now, once removed, my book sticks to everything. Thats my biggest complaint people. Back of the book is a little sticky. Seriously. Buy this!

Wow, what a story, complete with an unexpected twist in the end.. I haven’t seen Will Smith’s movie of the same name, but it sounds like a typical Hollywood treatment of a story that already has two other movies based on it. To expect the MC of the book to behave like a heroic character in a 2007 movie does the book an incredible disservice. The MC has faced horrors enough to result in a major traumatic stress syndrome. To face the distinct possibility of being the last person on earth not affected by a bacteria which has turned everyone else into vampires- both the dead and a not quite living. These are not glamorous “Twilight” vampires, but more like the creatures from Bram Stokers novel, with similar powers and weaknesses. One or two are people Robert Neville, the main character, knew before they were infected. Now every night they gather outside his barricaded house and try to entice him outside. Initially, Robert drinks himself into oblivion every night. As the book progresses the things has gone through are revealed- I’ll try to avoid spoilers here, but the MC’s actions are understandable. He also is trying to figure out how the plague spread. Not a trained scientist, he makes use of daylight hours when the vampires are hiding from the sunlight to take books from the library and try to understand. He also actively seeks out the vampires who are weak and lethargic in the daytime and kills them, initially with wooden stakes which were mentioned in Brampton Stoker’s Dracula. The MC has an electric generator to power his home and especially keep food from spoiling. He also has a car which he keeps maintained so he can drive to half destroyed supermarkets for food, as well as ammunition. The vampires cannot be killed by bullets, but it slows them down when the MC is in a tight spot. I had to take a break from reading about halfway as the story is really intense. If you approach the novel as the original, written half a century before the movie of the same name, before Anne Rice’s novels and tough movie heroes who can handle almost anything, the MC becomes more understandable, having gone through the collapse of civilized society.

Listen- if you could take away the corny vampires wiggling outside the house, Robert Neville’s almost annoying horniness, and the “I was loving you bit.” I would’ve said this was a great book. Upon re-read, I can say I no longer HATE it as I did the first time. However, I just cannot get past the vampires and their seduction~

Its beyond me to understand how horror fans can go on and on about their favorite horror novels as if they were masterpieces by Pynchon or Nabokov. The bottomline about I Am Legend is simple: its about loneliness and loss in a post-apocalypse world overrun by vampires. If that doesnt cause you to dissolve with laughter, then I Am Legend might be for you. Its well-written, holds the readers interest, and has been the basis for three movies. It will appeal to most teenage boys (or to grown up men who remember how the world feels to teenage boys). However, it doesnt deserve five stars because it doesnt have enough cool details about the end of humanity. I didnt see The Omega Man when it came out in the early 1970s. However, one of the kids at my junior high school got to see it, and he described every detail of the story to me. I was captivated. Now Im almost 50. Now Charleton Heston is dead. I am legend.

First and foremost, this isn’t a novel about vampires so much as it is a novel about loneliness. Robert Neville is isolated for years without any outside contact as the vampire hoard lurked outside his door. The shifts in his mood between apathy, anger, depression, desperate hope, and at times seeming madness and cruelty made his character feel real and believable. The chapter about the dog was so human it was painful. I thought that Neville’s exploration and experimentation in order to understand what the vampires were exactly and how the world was taken so swiftly was interesting. I appreciated the scientific elements that tried to explain well established tropes about vampires, either explaining how they could be possible or separating the ones that were no more than superstition. Many of the assumptions made in the novel were actually reasonable. The experiments that he carried out on those afflicted with vampirism, both alive and dead, made him a monster. The glee with which he executed or experimented on vampires showed his devolution from human to something else. This is where the novel hits kind of a tail spin. I get where the author is going with the evolution of humanity and how moral Neville’s thirst for knowledge and understanding was, but I feel like the novel got a little bit contrived around the end. Most of the novel was spent wondering where it was going, seeming just a bit confused and lacking any real direction. This made the second half of the novel feel forced and left me feeling like I had whiplash. Even so, I Am Legend stands as a classic because it was influential in the development of the zombie genre and the concept of a world wide apocalypse caused by the spread of disease and I can completely understand why. Even though the affliction is officially branded vampirism and explains vampire lore, the creatures in the novel are different from the types of vampires one is used to from other works of fiction and I found it refreshing.

Ill say this; Im glad I saw the movie before I read the book. If Id read the book before Id seen the film I would have been so peed-off at the hack job the movie was. At least I have the ability to say it was a mildly entertaining, if not regurgitated zombie movie. This book is fantastic. The way that Matheson builds Robert Neville, from the angry drunk to the somber yet thoughtful man, resigned to his fate. Its an emotional ride as we visit, through his memories, the brutal way in which his daughter was taken and burned with the other infected. The way his wife slowly succumbed to the plague and the way he had to deal with her, the dog, and finally Ruth and his breakdown. The way Matheson treats the vampires is so clever and refreshing and something I didnt expect. I chose this book because Im making my way through the Sci-Fi Masterworks list and thought, well its about vampires, why is it on this list? Well now I know and Im glad it deserves to be. Finally, unlike the movie, when you read the very last sentence to fully understand why its titled, I Am Legend.