excellent, one of herberts best ( )

Set in an alternative post-war London, '48 (the year is 1948) follows an American serviceman who is one of a few humans unaffected by a deadly disease Hitler unleashed on Britain. The story is of his attempt to outrun a group of dying Nazis hellbent on obtaining his blood in order to save their own skins.

It moves along at quite a fast pace, and is less horror-orientated than a lot of Herbert's other books, yet he still manages to get the odd scare in there for good measure. A solid thriller, and worth a read. ( )

Review by Jeremy Taylor

In 1954, Richard Matheson wrote I Am Legend, an end-of-the-world thriller about the last man alive after a biological attack. In Matheson’s vision, the bioweapons did not kill their victims but infected them with a horrible virus that essentially turned them into vampires. Matheson’s hero had to fight off the attacking blood-thirsty night-dwellers while trying to find a cure.

In 1978, Stephen King wrote The Stand, a lengthy tome about the fate of the world after an accidental biological weapons release. With 99 percent of the world’s population dead in a matter of days, the few survivors must band together to face their terrifying new world. King envisioned an apocalyptic faceoff between the survivors committed to rebuilding society and those bent on continuing the destruction.

In 2004, a movie called 28 Days Later portrayed, almost in real time, an adrenaline-laced chase through an all-but-destroyed London where a killer virus had turned everyone but a few lucky people into zombies.

The “last-man-on-earth” theme is a popular one in movies and literature, and it seems that authors and filmmakers are engaged in a continuous quest to outdo each other in creativity and gore in their ongoing flirtations with this story. Compare 2004’s Dawn of the Dead or Resident Evil, to 1978’s The Omega Man (a film adaptation of Matheson’s aforementioned book) for a rather graphic representation of this progression.

James Herbert’s ’48 is another good example. Set in post-World-War-II London, this book is the story of a small band of survivors struggling to flee the evil, destructive “black-shirts” in a world decimated by Hitler’s last-ditch, desparate, horrific attack. The “B2” bombs, warheads filled with a devastating virus called the “blood death,” have wiped out nearly all of the world’s population. The only survivors are those with the extremely rare AB-negative blood type and a handful of other, less fortunate souls who survived the initial attack but are slowly dying from the blood disease nonetheless.

The story starts with an immediate pulse-pounding chase scene as the protagonist, Hoch, is pursued through the London’s empty streets by a gang of murderous thugs loyal to Hitler’s ideals and infected with the blood death. Their only hope for long-term survival is to capture Hoch and drain him of his healthy blood, then attempt a transfusion.

We follow Hoch down into the tunnels of London’s Underground, into lavish hotel halls, and eventually to the top of the Tower Bridge, where he engineers a final standoff with the black-shirts who want his blood. Along the way, Hoch encounters a few other healthy individuals. One of them, Muriel, becomes a love interest in two drawn-out and unfortunately quite graphic sex scenes. Another, a German named Wilhelm Sterne, becomes the focus of Hoch’s hatred in a series of character-development scenes that add surprising depth to the otherwise action-based plot.

The body count in ’48 is unknowable. Beyond the initial deaths of billions of people worldwide due to the blood death, Hoch singlehandedly kills hundreds of black-shirts during the course of the story. In one brief but nonetheless disturbing scene shown in a flashback, Hoch runs over an insane man in the street for no reason other than the fact that the man is in his way. Hoch’s female companions continually entreat him to spare the lives of his enemies (“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” is a common refrain from these characters); but Herbert’s protagonist is unaffected by their pleas.

This is a dark story that ends without imparting much hope for the future. It is without question entertaining—the rapidity of the plot and the well-written scenes of nonstop action see to that—and the characters are multilayered and for the most part believable. The book accomplishes exactly what it sets out to accomplish. However, due to the unoriginality of the story, the graphic sexuality, and the overwhelming scenes of violence, it is not one that I feel can be recommended.

(http://www.cerebralexchange.com/books...) ( )

Cover blurb:

It's three years since the end of World War II. The Allies lost. So did the Nazis. The only winner was the Blood Death, a hideous plague hatched in Hitler's secret labs and sent across the Channel. Now, London is in ruins, roamed by packs of feral dogs and a few mysteriously immune AB-negative survivors. Among these is Hoke, an American loner fighting "slow dying" Blackshirts--scavengers led by a fascist named Hubble, who prey on the "AB-negs" for blood and body parts.

To stay alive, Hoke and four other AB-negs--a Lady, a factory girl, an air-raid warden, and an escaped German POW--will band together to confront the Blackshirts...a perilous battle that will take them to deep into the bowels of the Underground, where stairways are heaped with bones, gasoline-soaked rats become self-propelled firebombs, and the path to the future lies over the decomposing corpses of the past.