I Am Legend - Richard Matheson Book Review

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"I Am Legend"
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Review Summaries

"It is January 1976 and Earth has been overrun by vampires. Robert Neville -- a 36-year-old man trying to survive nights barricaded in his house in the greater Los Angeles area, and foraging for food, repairing his fortress, and killing sleeping vampires during the day -- may be the last living normal man on the planet. While he tries to figure out how they took over the planet and what stops them, he recalls the past decade and how he lost his wife and daughter to the horrific plague. Encounters with a former neighbor, now one of the living dead out to get him, a non-vampiric dog, and a woman from the hills who may or may not be a vampire, enliven the deadly process of survival over the next three years. This classic 1954 horror thriller is not just a great vampire story, but a great piece of imaginative writing, period. Hard to believe no one's yet made it into a movie. . . ."
David Loftus, Resident Richard Matheson Scholar

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Overall Review

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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
Descript. of chases or violence - 30%
planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 30%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 20%
Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 20%

Tone of book - scarey (primal ax-wielding fear)
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - fantasy story on current Earth
Horror story? Yes
Horror plotlets - vampires taking a quick bite

Main Character
Identity: - Male
Profession/status: - unemployed
Age: - 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events? Yes
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - an entire race
Age: - long-lived adults
Profession/status: - killer
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - throughout most of the book.
How sensitive is this character? - mean, arrogant
Physique - physically sick

Setting
Earth setting: - 20th century
Takes place on Earth? Yes

Style
Person? - mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death? - very explicit references to deaths and torture
scientific jargon? (SF only) - some scientific explanation
How much dialogue? - significantly more descript than dialog

Most similar books by Gordonator ranking
Vampire Dawn by Philip Henry
It's a Vampire Thing by Dakota Cassidy
The Hunted by L.A. Banks
The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing by Allen C. Kupfer
One Foot in the Grave by William Mark Simmons

Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).

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