I think Matheson has drawn up Neville very well (by the way, I couldn’t help noticing Neville was blond – whatever else Will Smith is he’s definitely not blond – wonder why they insisted having Will Smith in the movie). He has lost a wife, a daughter, his whole world. He has had some drinking bouts, he still has them as the need to escape reality is far too strong at times but most of the times he’s a fighter. He wants to live and he wants to know. He kills as many of the vampires as he can both for lack of something better to do and because he hopes he’s thinning their numbers at least a bit. Most of all, he realizes that he’s most likely the only human left on
Earth and that his life will probably never change its pattern, but nevertheless he trudges on, nevertheless he tries to make a change no matter how little.

Matheson brings us a whole new approach to the vampire field: so far we’ve only knew them as mythical creatures fearing garlic, mirrors, sunlight and crosses, only killed with stakes through the heart and multiplying by biting people’s necks. In this book, Neville puts all the past preconceptions aside and dedicates himself to studying them (after all he did have a lot of free time). He does some interesting discoveries: vampirism is transmitted by a germ, a germ fearing garlic and sunlight, a germ managing to “glue up” minor injuries like bullet holes (Neville thinks that shooting them is like shooting bullets through tar) and somehow afraid of air – whenever a vampire’s body is opened, regardless if it’s with a stake or not, regardless of the spot, the germ dies and the vampire too. All other stuff (the mirrors, the crosses) were purely psychological and due to shock. I do find it a new and very interesting approach to vampires – I mean no one else as far as I know has ever tries explaining them scientifically.

I also find interesting Matheson’s approach to the notion of legend and to the notion of normalcy. While definitely not new I like the way he put them to use in this book: In a world where vampires were 99% of the population they were the normal ones. And, like the people they once were, they set on building a society. “Full circle”, Neville had thought.

What I liked most: I think the title is absolutely fabulous – “I am legend” – and the idea behind it is very interesting too. I also liked this new approach on vampires and… well, everything written above.

What I liked least: One minor detail: Robert realizes once that vampires weren’t capable of logical thought, they couldn’t even think a minor thing like burning down his house since they wanted him dead. However they do manage to invent the pills needed to keep them out in the daylight? (but, of course, this can be interpreted in many ways – for example what if Robert was wrong and they weren’t that dumb in the first place but only playing with him?).

Recommend it? Yes. It has some interesting ideas :)

The quote *probably SPOILER but probably no more spoiling than what I said so far* :

“They all stood looking up at him with their white faces. He stared back. And suddenly he thought, I’m the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.

Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces — awe, fear, shrinking horror — and he knew that they were afraid of him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt and did not hate them. [...]

Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain.

[...]Full circle, he thought [...]. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.

I am legend.”

Written by the same author:
Somewhere in Time
What Dreams May Come

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