User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Absolutely disturbing modern classic! Robert Nevile is the last human in town, maybe on earth. All others are infected and turned into vampires. You read how more and more got infected, how they were buried (this will give you nightmares). There was a pandemic (seems familiar in times like ours at the moment). Ben Cortman, colleague and neighbour who reminds him on Oliver Hardy (the comedian) shouts every evening he should come out. But Robert doesn't want to turn into one of them. He does research on the bacterium that transforms humans into vampires. He takes care of a dog. At some time a woman who calls herself Ruth, enters his dreadful life. Is she infected? At the end you'll come to know who says 'I am Legend' and what's the meaning behind. This is a fantastic, extremely well written book with a very serious message. I can highly recommend reading it. Great plot, great prose, compelling and several movie adaptions!
Rating: really liked it
["Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering
Rating: really liked it
I loved this book! Was very creepy to read.
I thought it was brillant from beginning to end.
One of my favourite books of all time ever!
That ending! WOW
Rating: really liked it
I Am Legend, Richard MathesonIt was influential in the development of the zombie-vampire genre and in popularizing the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease. Robert Neville appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic that has killed most of the human population and turned the remainder into "vampires" that largely conform to their stereotypes in fiction and folklore: they are blood-sucking, pale-skinned, and nocturnal, though otherwise indistinguishable from normal humans. Implicitly set in Los Angeles, the novel details Neville's life in the months and eventually years after the outbreak as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease. Swarms of vampires surround his house nightly and try to find ways to get inside, which includes the females exposing themselves and his vampire neighbor relentlessly shouting for him to come out.
Neville survives by barricading himself inside his house every night; he is further protected by the traditional vampire repellents of garlic, mirrors, and crucifixes. Weekly dust storms ravage the city, and during the day, when the vampires are inactive, Neville drives around to search them out in order to kill them with wooden stakes (since they seem impervious to his guns' bullets) and to scavenge for supplies. Neville's past is occasionally revealed through flashbacks; the disease claimed his daughter, whose body the government forced him to burn, as well as his wife, whose body he secretly buried but then had to kill after she rose from the dead as a vampire. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه نوامبر سال2017میلادی
عنوان: من افسانه ام؛ نویسنده: ریچارد ماتیسن؛ مترجم: پریسا کاروند؛ ویراستار نرگس حسنی؛ تهران: انتشارات پریان، سال1395؛ در263 ص؛ شابک9786009331666؛ داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
این کتاب یکی از نامدارترین رمانهای خونآشامی سده بیستم میلادی است؛ و هماره در فهرست ده خواندنی انتقادی برتر ژانر وحشت بوده است؛ کتاب نخستین بار در سال1954میلادی نگاشته شده؛ اما داستان در سال1976میلادی (یعنی بیست و دو سال پس از نگارش) رخ میدهد، و به همین برهان در طبقه بندی علمیو خیال انگیز قرار گرفته است؛ «من افسانه ام» در سال2012میلادی جایزه ی «برام استوکر» را از آنِ خود کرد؛
شخصیت نخست این داستان، «رابرت نویل»، تنها فرد زنده ی روی زمین است...؛ اما او تنها نیست؛ طاعون درمانناپذیری، همه ی افراد جامعه اش را، به موجوداتی شبرو و تشنه به خون، بدل کرده، که میخواهند، او را نیز نابود کنند؛ «رابرت نویل» روزها به شکارچی بدل میشود؛ کسی که ویرانه های متروکه ی تمدن را، در پی خونآشامها جستجو میکند، و شبها در خانه اش پناه میگیرد، و برای برآمدن خورشید انتظار میکشد...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 13/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 17/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
Hm.
Honestly, this is a tough book to review.
I did like the story, but one of the
biggest bothers for me here was not fully understanding
why the world has gone to shit &
why everyone is now a vampire.
The book just drops you right in the middle of Robert Neville's situation, which is a day to day existence of killing vampires during the day & hiding in his house during the night.
I'm the kind of SF reader who likes a bit of depth to be given to the cause of disaster, and this story largely glosses over the
"Why?"But I'm coming at it from the angle of a reader who has
exhausted the zombie/vampire/virus genre. For the time it was written, this probably struck readers in a much different way.
If you're basing your opinion of this book solely off your knowledge of the movie, I'd ahead and throw that idea out the window because this book is nothing like the Will Smith, good-guy-out-to-save-humanity, crying-over-his-dog, self-sacrificing version Hollywood has created.
This is much darker.In fact, I imagine a group of important movie folks came to the conclusion that Matheson's story is
"pretty nifty, but how about we throw out all the deep, scary conclusions about human nature & amp up the action x1000 & also we need a German Shepherd in there so Smith comes off as even more relatable & wholesome."Robert Neville is not necessarily squeaky clean protagonist, and that realistic quality of his character is essential to the observations Matheson is making here. By the end, you aren't 100% sure what outcome you're rooting for & for me that is one of the most powerful aspects of how the story is told.
But again, I'm not sure I'm fully on board with the
details of why & how Neville has managed to survive for years under these conditions.
Neville has brick- & rock-proofed his home against the vampires that are constantly trying to get in with a reliable supply of garlic. He sound proofs his house, has a gas generator that he keeps running by way of a nearby gas station, and an ungodly amount of alcohol, cigarettes, and wine in his home.
I guess a scenario where all of those things exist in Neville's possession isn't
outlandish but the story itself wasn't long enough to explore any sort of break down of these proofs, and thus it felt a bit unrealistic to me.
Even so, Matheson does well in capturing the
absolute lowest levels of human desperation, taking us down deep into the terrifying subconscious of a secluded man on the brink of losing his ability to be compassionate & remember what it means to be human.
The pro here is, if you're curious about this story, it's short & will only take a bit of time to consume. If you don't love it, no big loss. If you do, well now you know!
Unfortunately I didn't
love it, but I appreciate the concepts here & I definitely enjoyed the last 1/4 a lot more than the first 3/4. Worth a read!
This review and other reviews of mine can be found on Book Nest!
Rating: really liked it
This was a heartbreaking, yet innovative story. You really felt for Neville, as he struggles with the new normal that he is forced to live in. Each and every time you feel like there is some hope for this character, it is is stripped from him, in ways that you wouldn't expect. And you join him, as he falls deeper into a depression and state of hopelessness. This isn't a long story, and I felt could have had some more detail in certain areas, but it was a solid character-driven book. I also really loved the depth of the scientific rationale, as it pertained to the vampires.
Rating: really liked it
Is it a good idea to read a book about a deadly plague during a pandemic?!This is so much different than the movie!!
"In fact, I much prefer the book to the movie." - said almost every book enthusiast out there.I Am Legend has been on my list of books to read for years. I knew that I'd likely enjoy it since it's about vampires, but I was not prepared to like it as much as I did.
Robert Neville is living alone among a deadly pandemic. Everyone has died or turned into vampires.
Robert is the last of his kind hunting down vampires during the day, stocking up on essentials (likely toilet paper...ha!), and tries to ignore the screams and taunts of the monsters at night.
It's this day-to-day life existence that gets to you.
What
Richard Matheson does so well in this book is showing the isolation of Robert Neville.
He battles depression. Alcoholism. Loneliness.
He tries to save a stray dog.
He just keeps on keeping on...
As a reader, you start to question too on why he keeps on living.
While reading this book, there where times that I thought he should just open up the door.
Just let them in and kill him.
I felt bad for Robert and didn't know if I could live in this type of existence either.
There's not a ton of action in this book but I was fine with that. It was more of a slow build up to that ending.
And the ending is fantastic in my opinion.As I'm sitting here thinking about how the book ended last night, I love where
Matheson takes this plot and character.
You crafty bastard you.
Bravo
Matheson! Bravo!
Rating: really liked it
I loved this book. It was really interesting the whole way through with a MC that really had to work hard to figure out how to get out of this situation. It was so cool figuring it out beside him. Easy classic to read - def recommend
Rating: really liked it
I was going to rate the book a lukewarm 3 stars, but then I looked once more at the date of publication (1954) and reconsidered. A bit of historical perspective, of literary context elevates this novel to the well deserved 'genre classic' status. At the time Matheson published his science-fiction take on the gothic vampire myth, the market was a lot different from today's oversaturated landscape that has largely trivialized the subject and gave it a curious teenage romance slant. Even bringing in the scientific method of study for the phenomenon and its associated paraphernalia ( the bloodsucking, the garlic, the cross, the wooden stake, the fear of light, the sleeping underground, the bullet invulnerability) was probably a novel approach to a dusty theme:
Something black and of the night had come crawling out of the Middle Ages. Something with no framework or credulity, something that had been consigned, fact and figure, to the pages of imaginative literature. Vampires were passe, Summers idylls or Stoker's
melodramatics or a brief inclusion in the Britannica or grist for the pulp writer's mill or raw material for the B-film factories. A tenuous legend passed from century to century. I didn't much care for the prose: it is concise and clear in its presentation of the main themes but I found it lackluster and unconvincing when it tried to delve deeper into emotional intensity for the main character. I could also complain about the lack of action, but I believe this is more a novel about ideas than a high octane action thriller. To finish with the grumbling, I would have liked a more rigorous attempt with the scientific speculations. Most of the ideas are sound, but the way they are fitted together seems fishy, with some of the argumentation incomplete. Let me give you a few examples :
- vampires are destroyed by sunlight, yet when they are hidden in deep cellars and dark places during the day they are still handicapped
- the transmission is supposed to be airborne, yet two other theories are given equal importance : direct contact with open wounds and insect bites (mosquitoes)
- bullet wounds are instantly healed (didn't they have exploding ammo in 1954?) yet knife cuts are still bleeding
- the disease affects the brain, but in a curious way : speech is unimpeded yet the use of tools is lost and social interaction is lost.
The last one is the one I struggled with the most. Other reviewers noticed also that the monsters are closer in behaviour to zombies than to classic vampires. Cesar Romero cites the book as a primary source, Stephen King alsao makes reference to it.
On the positive side, two aspects of the novel stand out and will probably come to define it for me in later years as the actual details of the plot will fade from memory:
- the psychological pressure of being the last man on earth : Richard Neville is utterly alone, he has nobody to turn to, has lost his wife and kid in horrible circumstances, yet he must find the resources inside himself to go on living from day to day. His heavy drinking, his episodes of paranoid depression and self destructive rage are painfull to watch, as are his efforts to organize his daily routines with checklists and his obsession in hunting down his afflicted neighbours when they are incapacitated during the day. The episode of the feral dog is probably the best written part of the whole novel.
- the implications resulting from the demotion of humanity from the top of the food chain, something that I have remarked upon in another classic I read earlier this year (The Day of the Triffids).
Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man. exclaims Neville towards the end of the novel, when he realizes that the monster from the fairytales is in fact himself. The future of the human race might well be carried on by people with wings or by people who use photosynthesis instead of eating solid food or by vampires who drink blood and go out only at night.
[edit] for spelling
Rating: really liked it
I just re-read this after watching some of the movies based on it. It's truly a chilling book. It's an apocalyptic novel. The vampire plague has destroyed our society. Much of the book focuses on our hero's loneliness. When he finds an uninfected dog, his attempts to befriend it are almost pathetic & truly heart-wrenching. It's well worth reading.
There are 3 movies that I know of that are based on this book.
The Last Man On Earth starring Vincent Price in the mid 60's. This follows the book pretty closely.
The Omega Man starring Charleton Heston in 1972 is very loosely based on the novel, but a great look at the 60's & 70's attitudes.
I Am Legend starring Will Smith in 2008 or so is the one I haven't seen yet. I caught the first 5 minutes & it bore no resemblance to the book & had really horrible CGI. Looked like a video game. I expected to see a Toon driving, not Will Smith.
Update: I did finally see this movie including both endings. It was incredibly bad. The happy ending was ridiculous.
Rating: really liked it
I’m not much of what you might call a “vampire guy.” By which I mean both that I am not a vampire, or a guy who likes vampires or vampire-themed endeavors. Thus it stands to reason that I never would have read Richard Matheson’s
I Am Legend had not the wildcard of my book club chosen it as this month’s selection. Frankly, I was a little underwhelmed by the choice. The critical “blurbs” did not help matters along. Dean Koontz said it was the “most riveting vampire novel since
Dracula,” which is great, except my last – and only – vampire novel was
Dracula. Another blurb called it one of the “ten all-time best novels of vampirism.” If I loved vampires, this would be meaningful. But really, I’m vampire-neutral. Maybe even slightly vampire-negative. (I mean, with the whole
Twilight thing). I wholly support zombies, however.
But really,
I Am Legend isn’t strictly a vampire book. (At 170 pages, it barely achieves book status at all. It's really closer to a novella). Instead, it straddles genres, stubbornly refusing to be one thing or another. Perhaps this is the reason people keep trying to turn it into a satisfying film. It is a potent canvas ripe for many different kinds of tales.
The main storyline is pure apocalyptic fiction. The novel opens with our protagonist Robert Neville as the putative last man on Earth. It is 1976, which stands in for the future since this book was first published in 1954. There has been some sort of war/disease combo that is elliptically alluded to in a short flashback. The human race is either dead or turned into vampires (Or both? Are vampires undead? I suppose I could look this up...). The exception, of course, is Robert.
Woven into the end-of-days context is an old fashioned cast-away story, akin to
Robinson Crusoe or
The Swiss Family Robinson.
I Am Legend begins well into the vampire apocalypse, introducing Robert as a man who has learned to survive. It takes us through a typical day: waking up; eating breakfast; making repairs to the house; leaving the house to kill sleeping vampires or pick up supplies; returning home; making dinner; listening to music; getting drunk; trying to ignore the vampires outside your house who are taunting you both verbally and – in the case of the female vampires – sexually. (Because anything having to do with vampires has to touch on the repression of sexual urges in some manner).
I Am Legend is also, and most fascinatingly, a grim kind of character study. Matheson makes a rather daring literary choice in not giving Robert anyone or anything to play off of. There is not another human to talk to. There is no pet. There is not even an inanimate object like
Cast Away’s Wilson to act as a sort of muse. There is only Robert. He is an angry, bitter man, which is altogether understandable. He is also a high-functioning alcoholic. Also understandable. The novel's high points are a couple powerful sequences in which this hard, down-to-basics shell is peeled away to surprisingly moving effect. (If that ambiguous sentence leaves you scratching your head, I have succeeded).
One thing I found entirely missing, other than people, is any semblance of lightness or joy. Robert – who lives in the LA-area – never has any fun with his sanctified status as last living avatar of the human race. He doesn’t go into a museum, take all the famous artwork, and then use it to decorate his bedroom. He never goes to an adult bookstore and takes all the porn. I suppose this is closer to a realistic response to losing your family, friends, and the rest of the world. Still, we can all use a laugh now and then, right?
Matheson tells this story in the third-person limited. The point of view is strictly confined to Robert and what he is seeing, feeling, thinking. The result is a constricted, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. Robert’s world is as small as it is empty. Matheson makes you feel the cramped confines of Robert’s fortress-house. He is also good at suggesting the creeping madness that comes along with that confinement.
I can’t say much more without venturing into spoiler territory, and I don’t want to do that. So instead of dancing around themes or vaguely hinting at plot-points for another 1,000 words (which is actually my first inclination), I'll just wrap this up. This is a quick, surprising little novel with a slammer of an ending.
Rating: really liked it
This is a hard book for me to rate. On one hand it’s a gritty and harrowing exploration into the mentality of extreme loneliness and isolation but on the other it’s an almost cartoonish horror that actually made me laugh when it was supposed to be haunting.
Now let me try to explain a little: there’s just something overwhelmingly ridiculous about naked vampires lurking outside Robert Neville’s house trying to lure him outside with the prospect of sex. They try to tempt him with their bodies, so they can drink his blood when he has left the safety of his home. It just seemed too comical. And to be honest, it is quite a clever move on behalf of the otherwise moronic vampires. It shows that they are cunning and manipulative; yet they still cannot figure out how to get into his house by force. It makes little sense.
Realistically it is not that hard to break into someone’s home. So, this did not sit well with me considering how ordinary and dull Neville is. His house is not fortified with any real defences. He frequently goes outside to tackle a mob of vampires with nothing but a basic pistol and somehow survives some insanely close encounters. It just took way some of the realism. And that is one of the key concepts behind the book: it is supposed to feel real.
This is not some Hollywood blockbuster. It is not about the action. It is about survival. And it’s about a degrading and miserable mind faced with the complete annihilation of society. These elements were powerful and even moving. I felt for Neville because he was so ordinary. He’s just a normal guy in a terrible situation and his skillset is very limited. He has somehow managed to survive like this for months when everyone else seems to be dead. As the book begins it is clear he is unhinged and this only gets worse, but the vampires themselves let the story down.
For me, this is one of those books made popular because it has a fantastic concept behind it, but for the horror elements need a bit of work.
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Rating: really liked it
"The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him."
Robert Neville is the last man on earth...or is he? Following the outbreak of an incurable plague that has mutated every other human on earth into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures, Robert Neville must scavenge for food and supplies during the day, whilst hiding in his boarded-up, vampire-proof home at night. Living a solitary life for so long is not easy, and so he is constantly on the look-out for fellow survivors...
This was a buddy-read with my bestest friend, Abbie. We chose this because she is literally a speed-demon and if we had chose a long book, I would be lagging behind for too long! Turns out, I did lag behind anyway because even though we both finished I Am Legend pretty close to each other, my edition also had a selection of short stories written by Richard Matheson. So I'm only now "finishing" the entire book.
I had watched the movie I Am Legend a number of years ago. All I can remember about it is Will Smith and a dog... and that's it. Although what I've found really weird about my reading experience is that I did not cast Will Smith as the role of Richard Neville in my head - Abbie said she did.
I really liked this book, which was surprising to me given that its basically focused on one character. Usually I would find the lack of dialogue and conversation quite boring - although we did get some flashbacks to before the plague, which I particularly enjoyed, with some scenes being quite chilling. Similar to what Abbie said, the constant drinking and throwing whiskey around and smashing glasses did start to grate on me after a while. I understand his alcoholism - I'm pretty certain I might succumb to addiction myself if I was the lone survivor of some plague, but it just gets repetitive after a while. What was disturbing to me was his weird fascination with the female "vampires" - DUDE. What the fuck is wrong with you!!
Okay, so I feel like the last paragraph had a lot of complaining, so I'll talk about what I loved. I loved the SCIENCE. I was geeking out over Richard's thoughts about what possibly caused the plague. He was basically conducting his own research and it was like reading my day-to-day experiences in the lab - disappointment after disappointment. A theory that seems so promising quickly dispelled. Microbiology and bacteria are my forte, so his research around this area had me nodding along in agreement. So that was awesome. The "vampires" themselves were pretty damn scary. I got confused at times because I was like "Are they vampires or zombies? Or a mixture of both?" There were different types and it just wasn't explained very clearly at times.
As for the ending...WOW. I was blown away. One of the best endings I've ever read in a book. It felt completely out of left-field and left me a bit gobsmacked. AMAZING. I Am Legend was a great, quick read and I have to give it 5 stars out of 5. Matheson's writing is simply outstanding and I want to read more.
With regards to the short stories, some were great and some were not so great. Prey was a brilliant short story, it reminded me of Battleground by Stephen King. Dance of the Dead was also pretty eerie. I didn't really include the short stories when giving my rating for this book, as I simply wanted to rate I Am Legend as a standalone book.
But yes! More Richard Matheson is definitely on my radar. Now for another buddy read with Sadie, Mindi and Ashley from bookstagram - can't wait!
Rating: really liked it
There are some excellent reviews out there. I know I was complaining about sqeeing and gifs recently, but I can't help but think a classic book like this could use a little modern reviewing.
Summary:
I'm a little mixed in my reading reactions to a novella that feels more like a self-conscious allegorical tale than truly innovative storytelling. The short, choppy prose suited the narrator, but gave a more limited ambiance to the setting. Given the protagonist Neville's relatively easy ability in moving around the world (seems to take a little siphoned gas and he's go to go), I felt like it was an incomplete story that left me with many questions about the world.
I do appreciate the sophisticated way Neville's personal history is blended in to the current experience, an impressive contrast to many writers who feel the need for long expository paragraphs, but I would have liked more. The limited description leaves something lacking, perhaps the extent of the devastation. Is it enough that Neville feels isolated? Do we need the steps of how he got there? What does 'humanity' mean if you are the only human? Why try to survive? I'm not sure, and as Neville poses these questions, I found myself wondering what he had done to find other survivors, the timeline of catastrophe, the extent of the world breakdown. The spare depiction make me feel like it was more of a metaphorical tale, a study in the psychology of the individual and his coping with isolation and meaning without context of society. In this respect, the movie was more able to give the visual sense of complete loneliness and the frustration of working for a potentially futile goal.
It was also hard to have sympathy for Neville. Truly an Everyman, he drowned his emotion in alcohol as often as he attempted to control circumstance. I didn't admire or respect him; he was dogged but not creative or thoughtful. The lapses into existential questioning only reinforced the emotional distance.
The ending was a surprise; perhaps more likeable than that of the movie, but also more self-conscious and
created. There wasn't much build to the ending; there was very little sense of the "types" of vampires through the story--I had more of a sense of Neville's drinking preferences than the vampires. Still, it is a classic, so I'm glad I took the time to read it, but it feels a little too much like reading The Metamorphosis for my taste.
Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/0...
Rating: really liked it
Four fifths of the way through and the only thing on my mind was how incredibly boring and one-dimensional Robert Neville is. You would think that someone forced into solitude and surrounded by death and insanity would have a wonderfully colourful and twisted mind - if you're going to have a book revolving around a single character, make him a really good one. So, it wasn't until he began chasing, abusing and kidnapping a woman in the name of science (everything in this book was tunnel-viewed 'in the name of science' and dismissed any other possibilities and ways of thinking) that I let my imagination take over the plot.
I Am Legend is actually unintentionally Nabokovian. Robert Neville is a delusional psychopathic woman killer safe in his fantasy world of vampires and violence where he presents himself as the last vestige of rational thought. Closing himself off and leading a hermitic life, he spends his time dreaming about killing the filth of humanity who haunt his dreams and bitterly reflecting on his "wife", a woman who he was unhealthily obsessed with and murdered when she became a "vampire" ie he realised that she was not his misogynist vision of an inferior, man-worshipping, overly-emotional cretin lower than a dog (who he treats with more respect). One day, he finds, abuses and kidnaps a woman and locks her in his bedroom and she tries to win her freedom through seduction (though in the end finds that hitting him over the head is more effective). He gets arrested and is made to face what he has done, his victim even developing Stockholm syndrome, but further retreats into the safety of his self-deceptive mind where he twists the conventions of the world to point himself out as a legend, the last
macho, narrow-minded, patriarchal"real" man.
I give this book an extra star from all the fun I had trying to salvage something interesting and in the wise words of The Smashing Pumpkins: "The world is a vampire, sent to drai-ai-aiiiiiin"
