Genre: Fiction—Horror
Completed: 20 April 2017
Summary & Review:
William Neville finds himself alone in a world besieged by vampires after a plague sweeps the globe. Between nights of fending off waves of the undead creatures who swarm his house in hopes of drinking his blood, Neville works to figure out what causes it and how to cure it, if he can. Months and years pass until one day he sees a woman walking in the sunlight. Is this at last a companion, another survivor? Or, does this woman portend something worse?
This was a great little book. Matheson was really ahead of his time in the genre considering the book was written in the fifties. He created a fascinating, coherent world so I only wish the book was little a longer so he really could have explored more aspects of it. In Max Brooks’ World War Z (#290), a more contemporary horror novel, he left almost no stone unturned in the world he created. That’s one of the best parts of the book, i.e. seeing how thoroughly Brooks had thought out his zombie-apocalyptic world. If Matheson had given us a few more chapters, he could have done the same, especially between the time when the girl Ruth shows up and the end. The climax was too abrupt for me.
***Spoilers***
The ending was good, but not the one I hoped for as a reader. Throughout the novel I was pulling for Neville, so to see him lose out to the new vampire-led society was sad. I mean, the poor guy already lost the dog! What I wanted was for him to go full-out vampire hunter, like Neo in the first Matrix after he walks through the metal detectors.
Rating: 7.0
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