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  • Read this after I saw trailers for the movie and ended up prefering the book. Calling this a vampire book does not really do it justice as it not only tackles a number of different themes, but it handles the vampire element in a way that grounds the story and makes you believe that such a thing cou ... Continue

    Read this after I saw trailers for the movie and ended up prefering the book. Calling this a vampire book does not really do it justice as it not only tackles a number of different themes, but it handles the vampire element in a way that grounds the story and makes you believe that such a thing could really happen.

    

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• ― Braydin said on Jan 9, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Interesting but ending disappointed (no spoilers)

  • "I am Legend" was an engrossing read, but the ending disappointed me for some reason. It just kind of...ended.

    As a side-note, I'm very surprised to see how much they are changing from the book for the Will Smith movie coming out in December. The move from Los Angeles to New York City is p ... Continue

    "I am Legend" was an engrossing read, but the ending disappointed me for some reason. It just kind of...ended.

    As a side-note, I'm very surprised to see how much they are changing from the book for the Will Smith movie coming out in December. The move from Los Angeles to New York City is pretty major in itself.

    

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• ― JaxSean said on Aug 5, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I wished it were longer and more expansive. I liked how the title made perfect sense only at the very last sentance. Well done.

    

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• ― Kevin Kuphal said on Jul 31, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Hm.

  • I have to admit, I'm not sure what other people seem to see in this book. It doesn't have a particular air of greatness, and has one major negative points, in my opinion.

    You might consider this to be a spoiler, though I think any reader should take it into account before buying and reading th ... Continue

    I have to admit, I'm not sure what other people seem to see in this book. It doesn't have a particular air of greatness, and has one major negative points, in my opinion.

    You might consider this to be a spoiler, though I think any reader should take it into account before buying and reading this book. (For that reason, and perhaps a little out of bitterness and disappointment, I have not marked this comment as a "Spoiler alert".) The catch with this book is that the book itself is not actually a novel, in the sense of it forming a single cohesive story from beginning to end. What it actually is is a collection of short stories entitled "I Am Legend", in which the story "I Am Legend" is the longest short story in the collection, and is ordered first in the book. Nowhere on the outside jacket of the book is this fact made apparent, and there is no indication (such as a table of contents) in its pages, either; you come rather jarringly to the end of the "I Am Legend" story in the middle of the book, and the next page starts an unrelated story about a carnival game. At first, since you've had absolutely no indication that this new story is not related to "I Am Legend", it's easy to assume that Matheson has begun a second story arc here, and will check back in on "Legend"'s protagonist later. Then, you come to the end of the carnival-game story, and a new story is started.

    Now, it's not that I have any problem whatsoever with reading a collection of short stories; I enjoy it. But, I would have preferred some reference to the fact that this was such a collection BEFORE I began reading it. As it is, what I will always remember from my experience of reading "I Am Legend" is being extremely disappointed when the main story ended in the middle of the novel, and getting confused by the many unrelated short stories afterward.

    It's a bit like having a friend make you a mix tape of a certain band you like, let's say Smashing Pumpkins. You listen to the tape, and after about 4 good Pumpkins songs, a trance-style techno song starts, complete with goa kick-drums and sirens. "Ugh," you might think to yourself, "this doesn't sound like Pumpkins. It just might be, though, something new by them; they're trying to go in a bit of a different direction, maybe. I better stick with it for a minute or two to find out." So you listen through the 4-minute trance song (it's short, ok?), and Corgan never comes in on the track. The next song is another trance song, no Corgan in sight. Eventually you have to accept the reality that this Corgan mix tape has been co-opted somehow and is about half techno. Not that you have anything against techno, really, but the tape says "Smashing Pumpkins Anthology" on the label and case, and as far as you knew that's what you were getting. It's a bit sloppy at best, and highly deceptive at worst, to deliver content in such a way that the titled work takes up half the room of the medium, and a bunch of totally unannounced, totally unrelated content makes up the second half. See what I'm getting at?

    For that reason only, I have rated this book with 2/4 stars. "I Am Legend" is a pretty neat short story, and I would have loved to see it fleshed out to the page length indicated by the physical copy of its host.

    

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• ― Savedr said on Sep 3, 2008 about the Mass Market Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I Am Legend

  • This is a really good book, MUCH better than the movie. The movie, in my opinion, had no right to use the same title of the book as the only similarity is the fact that the main character's name is Robert Neville. It is a great vampire story.

    

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• ― Prettylolo said on Aug 24, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • FYI, the copy I picked up also contained assorted short stories from Richard Matheson. A few of which were really good.

    

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• ― Stubob72556 said on May 12, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Robert Neville is the last living man on earth ... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville’s blood.

By day he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

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• I Am Legend - General Discussion HSXTT (4, 4)
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