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Richard Matheson's "I AM LEGEND" is my all time favorite book. If your not familiar with it, the book takes place between 1976 and 1979. The novel opens with the monotony and horror of the daily life of the protagonist, Robert Neville. Neville is apparently the only survivor of an apocalypse caused by a pandemic of a bacterium, the symptoms of which are very similar to vampirism. Every day he makes repairs to his house, boarding up windows, stringing and hanging garlic, disposing of vampires' corpses on his lawn and going out to gather any additional supplies needed for hunting and killing more vampires.
Neville's psychological disposition is a significant element in the novel, and his struggles with despair imbue the character with intensity and gravitas. The author emphasizes that he is an ordinary, flawed man trying to deal with an extraordinary catastrophe. It also explores the loneliness of being by himself, excitement and hope of finding others, and disappointment over still finding himself alone. During the evenings, Neville drinks whiskey and listens to records. The records referenced by name are sometimes puns on what's happening and sometimes they simply reflect Neville's mood. Much of the story is devoted to Neville's struggles to understand the plague that has infected everyone around him, and the novel details the progress of his discoveries. Instead of asking the reader to accept a supernatural explanation for vampire phenomena, the author strives to offer scientific basis for such symptoms as aversion to garlic, craving of fresh blood, and resistance to bullets but vulnerability to stakes and sunlight. The aversion to mirrors and crosses is classified as psychological. Neville hypothesizes that he is immune to the bacteria because he was bitten by a vampire bat when he was stationed in Panama. One day, a dog appears in the neighborhood. Neville spends weeks trying to win its trust and domesticate it. He eventually traps the terrified dog and wins it over, but it dies from the vampire infection. This is the point I cry every time I read it! As the story progresses, it is revealed that some infected people have discovered a means to hold the disease at bay. However, the "still living" people appear no different than the true vampire during the day while both are immobilized in sleep. Thus, along with the vampires, Neville kills the still living people. He becomes a source of terror to the still living, since he can go around in daylight (which they can only do for a short length of time) and kill them while they sleep. The still living send a girl named Ruth to spy on Neville, and they cleverly replicate Neville's relationship to the dog. Ruth pretends to be terrified of Neville at first sight, and rather than spend weeks trying to win her over, he attacks her and drags her back to his house. Though Neville is suspicious of her true nature and much of their interaction focuses on Neville's internal struggle between his deep seated paranoia and his hope, it is clear by his seizure of Ruth that the scales have tipped in favor of the irrational. Eventually Neville performs a blood test on her, revealing her true nature to him before she knocks him out. Ruth leaves a note telling him about the group of people like her, explaining that she was sent to spy and how monstrous he appears to them. Months later, the still living people attack, shooting Neville but taking him alive so that he can be executed in front of everyone in the new society. Before he can be executed, Ruth provides him with a means of suicide. Neville chooses to take his own life because he finally realizes why the new vampire society regards him as a monster. Just as vampires were regarded as legendary monsters that preyed on the vulnerable humans in their beds, Neville has become the last of a dead breed: a mythical figure that kills both vampires and the infected living while they are sleeping. He becomes a legend as the vampires once were, hence the title. Fansatic book! This blows away anything Steven King has done. He also wrote a number of episodes for the original TV series The Twilight Zone and a bunch of movie screen plays. Some of his other books, including a western series are very good reads as well. But "Legend" is the one that I can read over and over. This book has so far been adapted to film four times. The more prominent of the two 2007 adaptations, now set for release on December 14, 2007, features Will Smith as Robert Neville and looks to be the first good adaption. There are quite a few changes to the story, but it still looks great! I look forward to seeing it opening day.

Terry Brooks - Armageddon's Children

I have been reading Terry Brooks since I was 15. He is bye far one of my favorite authors and I look forward to each of his books. In his latest novel, we see a combination of his two most popular series: The Word and The Void, and the World of Shannara. Brooks revisits the world of "The Word and the Void". That original trilogy was set in a modern day United States where there are demons working for the Void trying to turn humans to acts of evil to twist the world to be a more violent, dangerous, and lost place. John Ross, a Knight of the Word, fought daily against visions of the future that he had to try to prevent. Ross's visions were of events that could happen in his own lifetime and for all of Ross's success, all he did was delay the inevitable. Armageddon's Children is set some eighty years after "Angel Fire East" and the world is a ruined place. Pollution is out of control, a nuclear war occurred, man made plagues are killing off the survivors. The humans which remain live in compounds (like Seattle's Safeco Field) warded off against the outside world. Those compounds are all under siege and they are falling day by day. In Seattle there are gangs of children calling themselves Tribes that live outside the compounds. Adults have failed them and they must survive by becoming their own families and looking out for each other. Humans who had been caught outside for too long and who somehow survived drinking radioactive water and eating off of the poisoned land have mutated. This is our world, only broken. Brooks works on four storylines in "Armageddon's Children". One storyline is of a Tribe of children in Seattle called the Ghosts. The Ghosts are led by an older boy named Hawk who is just trying to keep his family alive. It is through Hawk's eyes that we see what his world has become. Two storylines have to do with the two known remaining Knights of the Word: Logan Tom and Angel Perez. Logan Tom has been sent by"The Lady" to find the Gypsy Morph somewhere in the Northwest. The Gypsy Morph is a being of great power and magic and which we know was somehow born to Nest Freemark after "Angel Fire East". Before I mention the last two storylines I need to mention what had been previously rumor and conjecture. Up until the announced publication of this novel it was suggested that the Word / Void Trilogy could be the world before The Great Wars that ruined the world and slowly evolved into the Four Lands that we know in the Shannara novels. This was always a great theory. In interviews before the publication of Armageddon's Children Terry Brooks finally admitted that this was true. That in his next trilogy he would start bridging Word / Void with Shannara. So, that brings us to storyline number three: Angel Perez. Angel Perez is another Knight of the Word who has been fighting to rescue as many children as possible before compounds are overrun by the demons and Once-Men. She is given a new mission: to find the Elves and to help them find some Elfstones. Now, elves have nothing to do with Word / Void, but have everything to do with Shannara. And that brings us to storyline number four: The Elves. We actually find out about the elves before we find out about Angel Perez and when they appear and they mention the Ellcrys, longtime readers of Terry Brooks knows without question that the two series have now been linked. The Ellcrys has given one of the Chosen a mission: to find the seeking elfstones to locate the Loden Elfstone and carry the Ellcrys out of the Oregon woods. This may not make sense to readers who have not read Shannara, but Brooks makes these concepts fairly clear even to newer readers of the series. So, that's what Armageddon's Children is about. Is it any good? Yes! I enjoyed this novel more than the last Shannara series. The more Brooks stays to the feeling of Word / Void the better the book is. There are plenty of references to the previous novels and several references to things we know from Shannara and even an explanation of why there are demons walking the land considering the nature of what we know about the Ellcrys. The primary complaint is that this is the first book of a trilogy so Brooks uses the novel setting stuff up and giving us some action and storytelling, but nothing is resolved. He ends with a cliffhanger. Brooks does not tell a complete story. Let me compare this with his other works. Each book told a complete story while still building to the larger story of the series. That is what is missing here. It is not a book that can stand alone, though I know that is because he is forced to be more descriptive about the world as it has changed from Angel Fire East and is nothing like The Four Lands. This book is designed as a book where new readers can step in and not feel lost because they haven't read the other books on both sides of the timeline, but will also reward longtime readers. "Armageddon's Children" is a success and is a strong work in the catalog of Terry Brooks. I look forward to the second novel "The Elves of Cintra" coming out in August.

The release date is out for the new Shannara novel. High Druid of Shannara: Straken the 3rd and final novel in the High Druid of Shannara trilogy will be released in hard back on August 30th 2005. This book would make a great post birthday gift (hint, hint). For more information please see Terry's site http://www.terrybrooks.net/novels/straken.html . Terry also talks about what he's got in the works. And it's not the new Magic Kingdom story he had been hinting at. He's going back to the Shannara series with a prequel, prequel. For more info click here http://www.terrybrooks.net/next.html . I look forward to seeing how he wraps up this series. If you haven't read any of the Shannara novel's you are missing out!