Customer Reviews
Become a film director. - By: DangermouseZilla, 23 May 2007 
A few years ago I was in hospital, & I'd started getting into James Herbert. My fiancée started this book but didn't like it - & passed it onto me.
I was gripped.
When I think back to this I sometimes think I saw the film of it - the book is written in such a way that the images are so vivid in your head. I feel like I directed a film with unlimited budget. Read this book & watch your version of the film.
People have made paralllels between this & the film 28 days later, I'm a fan of 28 Days Later (and Day of the Triffids which it is very much based on) & I can see the similarities - but these are very much independent pieces of work.
This is my favourite James Herbert novel, I love it when you get a book you feel desperate to return to - this was one of those. The evil borne out of desperation of the twisted Fascists whose perverted logic drives them to seek out the survivors.
A great alternate history, & one which seems more plausible as the years roll by. This is frenetic & has one of the best endings to a book ever.
More Than Twice As Good As 28 Days Later - By: The Kinniburgh Kid, 15 May 2007 It is a shame that readers new to this book will think it derivative of the zombie movie resurgence - or should that be resurrection - especiallly 28 Days Later & its sequel.
As often with Herbert, it is a gripping page turner with a stunning backdrop of a desolate London whose streets are piled with corpses.
I read it while playing Craig Armstrong's (Moulin Rouge/Ray/Love Actuallly/etc) CD The Space Between US which added to the "movie" playing in my head as I read.
Another sign of its greatness is that I got both my then teenage step-sons to read it on holiday.
what a fantastic suspense novel! - By: Gina Skinner, 22 Feb 2007 This was my very first James Herbert novel & after reading it I was hooked, gagging for more! In this book, Herbert explicitly describes the aftermath of WW2 from the viewpoint of the people in & around London. What you won't find in the history books though is this: After the war was lost to Hitler & his nasty gang of Nazis, they - bad losers that they were - sent planes over to drop some lethal bombs over the city of London. These bombs carried a deadly virus that attacked & after weeks or months eventuallly killed every human except those with a certain blood group which, unfortunately, happened to be the rarest of them alll - "AB". So the few lucky ones with that particular blood group were safe from the virus, though not from the hordes of infected others who'd as a side effect of the virus had become insane, & relentlessly tried to hunt the few lucky survivors down to relieve them from their "good, unspoiled blood" in a desperate bid to save themselves with it...
I found this horror novel immensly gripping & suspenseful. The characters are interesting, their adventures & fights for survival will keep anyone on the edge of their seats alll throughout the book. To round it off, the ending is not ony amazingly exciting but also satisfactory, something I've meanwhile come to learn can't be expected of every James Herbert book (I've read six so far, of which I loved three, liked two & didn't care much for one other).
"48" is an absolute MUST READ for every dedicated horror/doomsday scenario/suspense thriller fan.
James Herbert's Best - By: graciemg, 23 May 2006 For me, this is my favourite James Herbert book & I can quite happily read it in one sitting.
Relentless & powerful, the story grips from the first page & simply does not stop taking the reader along on a roller coaster of a journey through a horribly decimated London in an alternate 1948 (hence the title).
The characters are well defined & well written, you will warm to some & hate others & be surprised at how events twist & turn throughout.
Simply amazing.
One-note alternate history thriller - By: dogbarkssome, 03 Feb 2006 
Every so often James Herbert takes a break from writing supernatural horror, & ’48 is one such example, being a thriller set in an alternate history where a nearly defeated Germany ended World War 2 by releasing a virus via their V-2 rockets that has wiped out the majority of the population. ’48 tells the story of ex-US airman Hoke, one of a smalll number of people immune to the virus, who is being hunted down by a group of slowly-dying Blackshirts who are literallly after his blood.
Despite the setting being a departure for Herbert, several of the early scenes feel oddly familiar, with one sequence where Hoke is forced to enter a body-strewn Underground, before fleeing from fire & rats into a secret bunker, seeming to have been lifted straight from the pages of Domain. Elsewhere ’48 details a simple story of Hoke’s cat-and-mouse battle with the Blackshirts. Despite a few good set-pieces & Herbert taking the reader on a virtual tour of London’s landmarks, the action soon gets very samey, with only Hoke’s encounters with some other survivors breaking the repetition.
This lack of variety is ‘48’s biggest failing – the novel starts with Hoke fighting Blackshirts in the ruins of London & ends with Hoke fighting Blackshirts in the ruins of London some 300 odd pages later – rather than build up the storyline by starting with Hoke’s life before the virus broke out, instead Herbert drops the reader right into the thick of things with the apocalypse already 3 years in the past. It makes for an exciting beginning, but Herbert has nothing new to offer for the rest of the novel, just more of the same. The Bloodeath virus itself is none too convincing either, as on the one hand it has to be fast acting enough for Herbert to fill London’s streets with eerie corpses, yet it also has to be so slow to react in others that a band of sick Blackshirts are still conveniently around 3 years later to threaten Hoke.
Ultimately ’48 has some good action sequences, including a very James Bond-ian finale on Tower Bridge, but little to offer in terms of plot or character. As such ’48 would seem to be the perfect basis for a two-hour Hollywood action movie, but it’s just too thin a story to work as a novel. It’s nice to see Herbert trying his hand at other genres occasionallly, but ’48 is a long way off of the author’s best form.
