First Blood (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "HIS NAME WAS RAMBO, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the..." (more)
Key Phrases: fir boughs, young deputy, National Guardsmen, Medal of Honor, Special Forces (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn't know whom he's dealing with -- or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.

Millions saw the Rambo movies, but those who haven't read the book that started it all are in for a surprise -- a critically acclaimed story of character, action, and compassion.

About the Author

My father was killed during World War II, shortly after I was born in 1943. My mother had difficulty raising me and at the same time holding a job, so she put me in an orphanage and later in a series of boarding homes. I grew up unsure of who I was, desperately in need of a father figure. Books and movies were my escape. Eventually I decided to be a writer and sought help from two men who became metaphorical fathers to me: Stirling Silliphant, the head writer for the classic TV series "Route 66" about two young men in a Corvette who travel America in search of themselves, and Philip Klass (whose pen name is William Tenn), a novelist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University where I went to graduate school from 1966 to 1970. The result of their influence is my 1972 novel, First Blood, which introduced Rambo. The search for a father is prominent in that book, as it is in later ones, most notably The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), a thriller about orphans and spies. During this period, I was a professor of American literature at the University of Iowa. With two professions, I worked seven days a week until exhaustion forced me to make a painful choice and resign from the university in 1986. One year later, my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from bone cancer, and thereafter my fiction tended to depict the search for a son, particularly in Fireflies (1988) and Desperate Measures (1994). To make a new start, my wife and I moved to the mountains and mystical light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my work changed yet again, exploring the passionate relationships between men and women, highlighting them against a background of action as in the newest, Burnt Sienna. To give his stories a realistic edge, he has been trained in wilderness survival, hostage negotiation, executive protection, antiterrorist driving, assuming identities, electronic surveillance, and weapons. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446364401
• ISBN-13: 978-0446364409
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,804 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First Blood, or how to Destroy a Small Town, July 2, 2005

By	Mr D. "Artist/Designer/Kibitzer" (Cave Creek, Az United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

You are a war hero, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, finally back stateside and your welcome home has been dubious at best. Your mind is jumbled up and you don't know what you want to do so you start traveling around the country. You hitchhike or ride the bus when you can and walk otherwise. You camp out in the woods and live off the land as you are trained to do.

You are a law abiding citizen. You love your country, you fought for your country, and you've KILLED for your country. You are a trained killing machine, a weapon of mass destruction, sprung tight and ready to go off with provocation and provoke you they do. In town after town you have been rousted, not because of anything you've done but because of your scruffy appearance.

John Rambo is passing through Madison, Kentucky and decides to get a hamburger but as usual it's not that simple. Chief of Police, Wilfred Teasle has other ideas. He doesn't want any riffraff in his town so he picks the kid up and drives him to the edge of town, He wasn't particularly nasty about it, in fact he tried to be pleasant, determined but pleasant, but he wasn't so pleasant later when he found the kid in the local diner. He told the waitress to put the kid's order in a bag and hustled him back out of town. By now Teasle was very annoyed, so he went and parked on a side street and kept watch to make sure the kid did not walk back into town.

For his part the kid (Rambo) had reached his limit. If someone was going to push him, he was going to push back. He was determined to go back and confront the Chief and make him back down but of course Teasle had other ideas. He arrested the kid, took him to jail, hosed him down and started to give him a haircut and a shave.

Now, Rambo was an escaped POW. He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese and was tortured relentlessly before escaping, so when the deputies tried to shave him with a straight razor, he flipped out and grabbed the razor and slashed a deputy that reached for his gun.

Thus began an odyssey of death and mayhem in the nearby mountains and eventually destroyed a good part of Madison.

CONCLUSION

Most of you are probably aware that a movie was made from this book. Because of this I need to make comparisons to the movie.

The Book

This was David Morrell's first book and for a first book it showed phenomenal presence. The book was a pleasure to read. Morrell used easy to understand language and the novel moved right along smoothly. It contains cover to cover action and there's never a dull moment, literally the story seemed to jump out at you.

The macho macho plot seems to revolve around saving some perceived face. Teasle thinks if he backs down he would be setting a precedent and his little town would soon be inundated with drugs and undesirables, a ridiculous notion. On the other hand Rambo probably could have avoided confrontation if he'd have been forthcoming about his service, status and his medal. Instead he was close lipped and brought the confrontation to a head. At first you seem to pull for Rambo as being unjustly persecuted but ultimately he proves to be an out of control trained killer who is in a preservation mode - exactly as he was trained.

The Movie

In short the book was excellent but it was much more violent than the movie, which I'd seen first, so I felt it was much more violent than it needed to be. For example in the movie only one deputy gets killed almost accidentally and the viewer felt he deserved it.

In the book, Rambo was determined to kill everyone who came after him including the bloodhounds and he was good at his job. In the movie Rambo was not quite as psychotic and because of this you empathized with him as the underdog. I guess I feel that the book was great but honestly, I enjoyed the movie more.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Blood better than any movie, May 6, 2002

By	Greg (Staten Island, NY) - See all my reviews

Morrell became famous with this great novel. This book is nothing like the movies. In the movies Rambo is the clear cut hero while Will Teasle is the "Red Neck Sherriff" out to get someone who looks different. In the book there is not clear cut "good guy" or "bad guy." Both Rambo and Teasle are responsible for what happends. Both had a chance to let it go but don't. Rambo is going through a psychological hell in his mind when trying not to kill again but being forced to in his mind. Teasle who loses several close people in his life and is in the middle of a personal crisis at home. Both were heroes in different wars. Teasle was a hero in the Korean War while Rambo got the medal of honor for his work in Vietnam. This is a great psychological read. Both men think they are right and will not stop until the other is not breathing. Which one will win? Who is right and who is wrong? Also if you buy the book to read for the 1st time do NOT read the introduction if you don't want the ending spoiled.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Blood is Heavy criticism on the Vietnam war, April 19, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Sao Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: First Blood (Hardcover)

The novel "First Blood" by David Morrel may be wrongly interpreted as just an "action/adventure" thriller without a brain, but that's far from the truth. The book does contains some elements of the adventure genre, but it presents us with a much bigger vison of life than just that. It is about Intolerance and justice.

John Rambo, a vagant war veteran, is mistreated by a bunch of redneck cops in a small town in the US. Submitted to humiliation and torture, and being traumatized by the months (years?) he spent under torture by the vietnamese, the ex-green beret and war hero loses control, explodes in fury and hatred and fights back, starting a killing spree.

He hides in the woods, builds traps, he uses the elements of the nature against his pursuiters.

The climax hits when both him and his enemies are thrown in the woods, his element, were they have to play by his rules, and the animal within each one of them takes control.

Then, violence erupts.

The novel is very real and down-to-earth. It is quite different from the movie. It is not heroic at all. It is about being different and being thrown aside, it is about the indiference, hate and coldness that the United States gave to their war veterans. It is about intolerance and fear. It is about how the government destroyed the sanity of some kids to build killing machines out of them, and sent those killing machines to southeast Asia to a war they could not understand, didn't want to and, mainly, didn't HAVE to. To kill better.

It is about how, when those kids came back home confused and tortured by the atrocities they had seen/commited, their country threw them in the gutter, pretending that they weren't there. Disposable heroes.

It is not at all about madly killing faceless enemies, big guns and, explosions, and giant-brested babes waiting to be rescued. It is not about making toys and animated series for kids. It is about reality. Forget the movie adaptations, forget the distorted, pleasent and idiotic vison that Hollywood wants the world to have. The real thing is here. Read it.