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Whistle Stopper - I Am Legend
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $6.69
Your Save: $ 8.26 ( 55% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Tor Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765318749
ISBN: 0765318741
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2007-10-30
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: 2007-10-30
Studio: Tor Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: not as much for the sci fi fan
Comment: I bought this book based on the enthusiastically positive reviews here on Amazon, but I'm a bit disappointed. Some of the reviews said the book was far better than the Will Smith movie, so I was expecting something really deep and engaging. Instead, I felt the story "I Am Legend" had plot weaknesses and didn't hold my interest like I expected. There were a number of times when I thought, "But what if...?" or "Why didn't this happen...?" Some Amazon reviews even said the story's ending was far superior to the ending of the Will Smith movie, but I feel like I must have read the wrong book. The end of the story was anticlimactic and didn't seem to wrap up the meaning of the title at all for me.
I picked up the book because I enjoy sci fi, but I didn't feel this book was sci fi. It feels more like horror, and not just because of the vampires. Nearly everything about the story made it feel more like a horror story, and I'm not a fan of horror so I didn't enjoy it much. There are also several short stories following "I Am Legend" in this book (which aren't mentioned anywhere on the covers) and they are all horror genre stories. I read most of them but they just aren't my cup of tea.
One thing I noticed is that all the stories, including "I Am Legend," remind me of Stephen King's works. Obviously Matheson influenced King. If you enjoy Stephen King, then you'll probably really like this collection of Matheson's stories. But if you're mostly a sci fi fan like me, you may not enjoy it so much. I suspect the glowing reviews of this book are from fans of horror who maybe would have liked the movie "I Am Legend" to more closely resemble a horror movie than a sci fi flick.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Classic
Comment: Classic vampire/zombie/end of civilization book. Matheson influenced many of today's horror authors. A simply outstanding story and fun to read. I recommend you add this to your collection.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I read it when I was 19 and didn't do it for me even as a kid
Comment: Ok, so this is one of books that originated survival thriller/horror genre, but for me it wasn't so big. I guess it was writing style that I disliked.
Lord knows I read every novel or story by real writers who wrote horror (Edgar Allan Poe , Ambrose Bierce) and writer-entertainers like Clive Barker, Stephen King, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I loved everything when I was 18-19 , fiction, science fiction, epic fiction, horror and read even the worst books to the end, including James Herbert's 'Survivor' . OMG, was THAT one bad!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A story of it's own
Comment: I had seen the recent movie adaption to this book and I must say, I love both just the way they are. The book made the movie a lot clearer in ways for me, actually trying to put science behind exactly what the monsters were. This book is extremely well written for the time it came from, and the imagination is boundless. I love monster stories and this one is not one to pass up!
This book, however, comes with more than just I Am Legend. It also comes with assorted stories from Richard Matheson. Although his other stories aren't quite as long as I Am Legend, they follow a similar style and are definitely worth reading once you're done with the book itself. All in all this is an extremely great buy. I love it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: amazing short horror stories [no spoilers]
Comment: "I Am Legend" contains mostly short stories, where the book's first half is one story titled by the novel's namesake. The remaining creepy stories cover various characters, whether a younger or older female or a younger or older male, and places each person in a disturbing situation. The finely crafted plots capture the morbid struggles against a range of supernatural forces.
Since the story "I Am Legend" composes the largest amount of the book, it receives the greatest attention. It is about the supposedly last member of the human race, 36 year old Robert Neville. Daily he fights vampires and his own depression while trying to survive the deadly nights. The author brilliantly explains vampirism from a scientific perspective and additionally provides a shocking conclusion. The other stories while shorter are just as effectively engaging.
As with about every film-based novel, I would suggest at least not watching the movie prior to reading the book if not forgoing the movie thereby leaving the story entirely to the imagination.
I highly recommend this novel to any fan of the horror genre.
Thank you.
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Editorial Reviews:
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One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the "10 Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors--including Stephen King and Dean Koontz--who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. --Stanley Wiater
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