I Am Legend

Compelling story with the best kind of twist. I wish I could say that the prose was better. But overall a good horror Sci-Fi read. It’s a page turner and won’t take you long.

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.

I was surprised and enjoyed that the book was so different from the movie. It was an interesting story, this masculine post apocalyptic story, filled with great scares and really compelling main character. I liked the vibe of the main character, very no nonsense drinks and smokes, a very kind of badass guy.

*SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING* Wow, just wow. I dont know what else to say. Its an incredible book, dealing with a very dark but thought provoking subject. Ive always hated book like these, the whole post apocalyptic zombie land always seemed so childish and cliche to me, but I genuinely enjoyed this. The entire story just makes you think over and over, what would I do if I were him? Bare with me those readers that are like me that absolutely hate it when people (*cough cough* English teachers and librarians *cough*) say stuff like that but for once its actually true. The author makes Neville seem so real and so painfully human that its almost impossible not to relate him to yourself. That being said I did have a few problems with the book. For one thing the beginning was kind of a drag but it got better as it went on. For another, two words: The. Dog. That scene was the worst and was only put in to further inflict pain onto its readers. If I had been forced to read this in school I would have hated it but since I read it of my own volition, it actually was really interesting and I really liked the ending.

Many reviewers have described the greatness of this story and its influence on modern writers. I wanted to offer my viewpoint as a reader who had seen the movie first. I initially avoided the book because I felt that the movie, while entertaining, was shallow with an uninteresting story. However, the positive reviews finally convinced me to give it a shot and I am glad that I did. The character portrayed by Will Smith is a brilliant man who is the cause of the epidemic and also the eventual savior of the human race. The character from the book is a much more interesting and relatable one. He is just an average man who struggles to survive. Not only with the vampires, but also to motivate himself to complete the menial tasks required for his daily survival. The vampires portrayed in the movie are superhuman killing machines completely devoid of any perceivable intelligence. In contrast, the books portrayal of the vampires is much more interesting. They retain many of their human qualities, including their intelligence, personalities, and physical capabilities. This allows for interactions far more interesting than those found in the movie. The conclusion found in the movie is very unsatisfying. It serves as a confirmation of the womans belief that God had directed her actions, portends the rebirth of human civilization, and illustrates the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. All very common themes that deliver a boring result. The books conclusion deviates drastically from the movies. I dont want to ruin the ending, but I will say I found the final realization the main character is forced to accept very interesting and thought provoking. I encourage anyone to read the book regardless of their feelings on the movie. The book provides a deeper story and a much different take on the vampire genre than the one presented in the movie.

After Dracula, I Am Legend is my favorite vampire novel. I first read it when I was twelve, and Ive reread it many times and enjoyed it every time. Yes, some of this enjoyment is nostalgia, but it is true sci-fi horror and very well done. The vampires are the result of a plague, and there is nothing romantic about them. They want Robert Nevilles blood. He manages to keep them at bay, tries to adapt to a new existence without going bonkers, and suffers from loneliness and angst because he believes he is the last original human alive, at least in his corner of the world. It has a real twist for an ending. Its a quick read, but well worth your time, and truer to the spirit of what vampires are really all about: day sleeping blood-suckers! Come on! Theyve tried to turn I Am Legend into a movie three times, with the first, the Vincent Price version, coming closest to the original. Dont get me wrong. You can enjoy the second, the Charlton Heston version, and even the third, the Will Smith version--I found this one less satisfying because of the CGI vampires--but if its such a classic, and it is, why cant they just make a faithful adaption of the original novel without turning it into something hardly recognizable? Read the book!!

“I Am Legend” is actually one of those extremely rare examples where the movie was a vast improvement from the book. In the movie, the protagonist is someone who is courageous, resilient, possessing great integrity, and generally someone you want to root for; in contrast, the book’s main hero is a hysterical drunkard who seems to be more concerned with his lack of sex life and not the fact that the world has come to a virtual end. Weird priorities if you ask me, concerning yourself with your urges and not your own survival. Quite a few times he actually ponders sticking it into a female vampire, technically a living corpse. Yes, it gets that gross. When he finally encounters a living female, his first response is not an empathic “poor thing, she has just lost her husband and children, I shall help her as much as I can,” but “she’s skinnier than I prefer them but I’d still do her… hopefully she’s not infected… I wonder why she’s so afraid of me though?” Yeah, I wonder too, you absolute brainless caveman. You have literally just chased her through the field when she clearly didn’t want to be anywhere near you; you slapped her and physically dragged her into your house and locked her in your bedroom. The insolence, not acknowledging you as her knight in shining armor indeed *heavy sarcasm here*. At this point, I was actually glad at how the book ended because the literary Robert Neville indeed would better off being dead than the movie one. The movie one I mourned; this one’s death I actually cheered. So yeah, if you watched the movie, don’t bother with the book. You’ll most likely end up being disappointed.

Ok, I actually liked all of the movies (

Here is the story of Mr. Robert Neville, the sole witness and only survivor of the end of the world. One good day, people started to rise from the grave and turn into vampires. Our main character isolates himself in his house with everything he needs to survive. By night he stays in, tormented by the screams and memories of his past life, by day he hunts the devils. Kill them in their sleep. Richard Matheson left his mark in the vampire genre with I Am Legend, its one of the best vampires novels ever. It leaves you with a hollow feeling in the chest (the same feeling I got when I saw almost 25 years ago the original Planet of the Apes). The way he describes the solitude of Robert Neville, his desperation its just incredible. The fact that a new species (vampires) had organized and now rules the earth its just the final touch of desperation to the trama. Robert Neville is the last man on earth, the outcast, the intruder. He is the new and last monster to be destroyed. I Am Legend its a must in your book collection.

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.