A review by stormlightreader
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

This is a book of two halves for me. Seriously, I was completely divided while reading this. If I hadn't have read and enjoyed Richard Matheson's writing so much in Hell House, I probably would've DNFed this. That said, the ending did put the most anger-inducing scene into a bit more context, so not DNFing actually worked out this time. But I'm still annoyed by this book...

What I did like:
  • Matheson creates such a great atmosphere. From the opening sentences, the atmosphere of this story is palpable. You immediately feel how grim this world is and how it must feel to live this life.
  • The cause of the plague is really interesting, albeit a bit too briefly explored.
  • There is chunk of this book that is really scientific and that part is really interesting.
  • This is not what today's readers would expect from a vampire novel, and that made it a good story. 

What I struggled to believe:
  • It is so hard to gauge time in this book, the edition I read is 160 pages but spans three years. So, it's really difficult to comprehend just how much time is passing in these relatively short chapters.
  • Robert Neville conveniently has everything he needs 
    • A generator (which when the vamps attack, luckily they don't smash up because it's implied that they're not smart enough, even though they do intentionally smash his car up and pay attention to damaging the engine)
    • He has a steady supply of groceries, which last three years despite the amount of whiskey he drinks
    • Oh yeah, and he's immune to the vampiric illness
  • He begins to study science textbooks
    to teach himself how to develop a cure. This one man. Alone. Ok.

What I did not like:
  • He's incredibly horny and has clearly never learned how to remedy that urge without the use of a woman. So, I found being stuck in the head of this man for 160 pages to be incredibly draining.
  • There are numerous references to the women vamps parading themselves naked.
  • He takes a female vamp to experiment on and then it's justified that she just happened to be the first vamp he came across and when he bound her to a chair she was wearing a black dress and 'too much was on show when she breathed' so he had to be in a different room to her 🙄 seriously, draining.
  • He just had to inject the female vamp IN THE ARSE CHEEK 🙄
  • This point made a LITTLE bit more sense by the end but still:
    • He sees a woman and chases her down before dragging her into the house while she begged him not to kill her and by the end (30 pages later) it's love. I wanted to throw this book at the wall.