Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone.
An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him.
By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn….
Horror Book Review Blog: I Am Legend
After being enamored with Matheson’s Hell House, I was eager to read more of the man’s work, and the premise of I Am Legend piqued my interest. The sole survivor of a global pandemic after a nuclear war renders the world population to vampires. The plot reeled me in hook, line, and sinker.
I Am Legend was a slight departure from Hell House in that there was no haunted house nor ghosts to bewilder and terrorize our protagonists. This time around, our main hero, Robert Neville, is the only person left alive in the world after an epidemic wipes off humankind. Now Neville, in a post-apocalyptic world, faces a new threat – a new breed of mutated humans, vampires, resulting from the fallout of the disease that was the source of man’s demise.
In I Am Legend, we get a peek at what it’s like to be the only human alive. We get a small snippet of what that could have been like in the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last,” where our protagonist wants nothing more than all the time in the world to read. Being the Twilight Zone, he gets what he wants with dire consequences. Neville barricades himself in his home each night as a horde of vampires swarm to his house and torment him night after night. This horde is led by his now undead neighbor, Ben Cortman, who relentlessly calls out to Neville to surrender and come outside each night. Neville drowns out the noises outside of his home by playing loud music and spends most of his days preparing for another round of barrages while figuring out the cure to the mutation. As a result of the madness, Neville resorts to the one thing that can ease him – alcohol.
“He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Matheson’s 1954 novel keeps you on edge as you, the reader, along with Neville, cope with the isolation and burden of feeling the need to save what’s left of humankind, all the while fending for his will to survive, gather food, and avoid the creatures that stalk him just outside his front door. It is an arduous task that will have you rooting for Neville and fearing for his safety and sanity. I Am Legend is an excellent, heart-stopping, tense read that will have you reeling and praying that a vampire apocalypse is not in the cards for our future (not that any type of end is appealing).