I don't know what to think about this book. Surely, I liked it way more than the movie, because first it was well set in all the whole US environment (without actually naming a real city and a real street) and secondly because the not-happy-ending of the story, differently from the movie, was more coherent with the whole settings.

The plot was VERY ORIGINAL, especially if you think that this story was written in the 1954... the description of the techonlogy of that time gave much more humanity to Neville, our main character. Speaking of whom, I found that Matheson's characterization was quite good: he described a half tortured man and through the whole story we are able to find out what happened in his past that made him the man he is now. And what wasn't described with clear words was because it was so dark and horrible that it was left to the reader's immagination.

On the other side, I was just disappointed by how things weren't described as well as, instead, the author was able to do in the short stories attached at the end of this edition of the book.
The whole new society ordeal, how people could forget so easily that Neville was actually the NORMALITY, while they are some sort of abomination, how he started to made researches but suddenly we didn't know anything more about them, how Ruth could get so attached to him in such a short time, when instead others hated him so much, and on and on.

So, this story is quite revolutionary, but there could be so much more that Matheson could do with it, instead of leaving at that.
But I still suggest to read this book... you can find traces of King's style into it (well, the Master of Horror was clearly inspired by Matheson), you can find original sparks that aren't so frequent in today's horror literature and Matheson style, being so far from the common used one nowadays, is a small pearl that deserves to be analyzed and compared a bit more.

Really interesting, actually. I started reading it out of boredom and for lack of other books, but I don't regret it a tiny bit.
Differently from usual, the historical facts here are REAL (and that just shows you how much reality sometimes is more unbelievable than fantasy) and I enjoyed how the author was able to fit his plot into that, with some brilliant twists.

Actually, he couldn't let out some clichés, like the main hero and the heroine fallin in love, another character redeeming himself and suddenly growing up and understanding the importance of love and family. Very Americanish, if you can understand what I mean.

But I enjoyed his writing style, how he could mix science, history and his own story without being boring. The charcaters had strong personalities, even if a bit stereotyped, and he seemed to focus more on details and description instead of the people intereacting in the book. I don't know it this is because this book is one of a serie, so I maybe missed some information put in the other books, but after reading another book from him, I'm pretty sure this is just how he writes.
And I appreciated him even more in English, understanding once more how a translation can change an author's style.

Anyway, this is surely a good book to read to enjoy yourself during a trip.