Some part of me hoped that I had not inadvertently invited the wrong person into my home. If that is what makes a successful vampire novel, I'd say Stephen King has succeeded in a big way. View all 41 comments.

The last time I picked up a King novel, my inclination towards critical analysis of a text was still just a budding obsession. Now it is an enduring preoccupation. Try as I may, I cannot overlook the subtle slips in King's plot arrangement and characterization any more - the inevitability of women being cast in the molds of the lover or the victim of abuse or the tactless ingenue is a veritable threat to my fangirlism.

This is not to mention the tropes of the 'magical negro' and other assorted The last time I picked up a King novel, my inclination towards critical analysis of a text was still just a budding obsession. This is not to mention the tropes of the 'magical negro' and other assorted cliched representations of people of color. And yet I cannot challenge the legitimacy of his repute as a master story-teller. Even though it has been many years since I picked up my first King title from the bookshelves of a friend, his words still make me break out in goose flesh in the middle of the night, his narrative voice exerts a hypnotic pull rendering me incapable of detaching myself from the world wrecked by paranormal phenomenon that he carefully builds from scratch.

The horror that King conjures up here is not just a direct consequence of the emergence of an unknown, malevolent force which destabilizes the functioning of a secluded small town but the sinister darkness of the human soul which needs just the right trigger to be unleashed, to soundlessly absorb all capacity for reason and leave a bestial urge for carnage in its place.

The supernatural forces that threaten to disrupt the lives of King's characters are symbolic of the evils existing in the realm of reality - the ominous shadows of war, hunger, poverty, totalitarianism. All accusations of profit-making and sacrificing good writing on the altar of plot can be damned to hell.

King can write a wordy passage fraught with grim philosophical reflections when he wishes to. He can still rescue me from a miserable reading rut and remind me of the hollowness of ritualism - that faith is not prayer offered without feeling or the routine thumbing of rosary beads but simply the mind channeling an inner strength to purge the darkness within, professing unwavering devotion to a worthy cause.

It was ore, like something coughed up out of the ground in naked chunks. There was nothing finished about it. It was Force; it was Power, it was whatever moved the greatest wheels of the universe.

Before the abomination called 'Twilight' inspired the publishing industry to mass market vampires as lustful, gorgeous, innocuous hunks ready to pleasure women at their behest, there were fictional bloodsucking fiends like the ones in 'Salem's Lot. And no that is not a spoiler, given most community reviews here contain more generous spoiler-y synopses in this regard. In terms of thematic resonance and characterization this is far from King's best work, but if you haven't yet made yourself familiar with Bram Stoker's masterpiece and wish to make the acquaintance of vampires who give rise to pure spine-tingling, bone-chilling terror, this is the book for you.

Fans of The Haunting of Hill House will also find something of value here. I am just glad that there are a great many number of King titles out there left for me to devour. Belated as it might be, I am finally making my way through his surprisingly versatile oeuvre. That being said, horror done by King can really only be compared to horror done by King. Take The Shining , for instance. A writer named Ben Mears, who grew up there, comes into town to write a novel and exorcise his demons.

He starts canoodling with a young artist named Susan, and befriends an aging schoolteacher named Matt. Strange things start happening, emanating from the haunted Marsten House that overlooks the community. Those strange things, you will not be surprised, take a turn for the violent. I could probably stop writing right now, review complete. But then what excuse would I have for ignoring my family, specifically the child knocking on my office door right now? You can see early on many of the hallmarks he would work into his later efforts.

There is the struggling writer as the lead character. There are children, both in danger and as heroes. King leaps from person to person, from consciousness to consciousness, giving you a story from an eclectic collection of viewpoints.

Ben might be the moral and plot-necessitated hub, but there are many spokes. Among the dozens of characters, King gives us a small-town constable struggling with his courage; a young mother who abuses her newborn child; a couple engaging in a discrete affair; and a Catholic priest whose struggle is more with the bottle than his faith.

Are all these characters necessary to the storyline? No, absolutely not. Many, if not most, could have been shorn. The pages in my trade-paperback edition could easily have been halved, without losing any of the essence.

But the excess is what sets King apart. It is what makes him great. This is not, however, a great Stephen King novel. He does not have the complete and utter grasp of his material yet. There are lurches and sudden, jarring stops in the pacing. King then adds his own secret sauce, that sauce being blood, and lots of it. There were times I was more interested in literary comparisons of early verses later King than I was in the tale unfolding on the pages before me.

The characterizations are just not there. King has the ability — think Jack Torrance, in The Shining — to create characters of incredible depth and complexity.

Characters that are unforgettable. More importantly, the connections between the characters is lacking. Ben saunters into town and quickly falls in love with a woman and becomes BFFs with a guy. This happens overnight, with no real explanation except expediency. As the plot reaches its endgame, and people find themselves in mortal danger, King desperately needs us to believe in the bonds — love, affection, loyalty — between his characters. Thus, I didn't feel any stakes when Ben, and the people around him, found themselves struggling with their very lives.

A guilty pleasure worth a cheap thrill? Something to be read at the turning of the season, when leaves change and fall, when the air sharpens like knives, when the long dark of winter begins whistling in the wind?

King is an American treasure. He is a master. He has a gift for baking complex and knotty themes into deceptively simple spook stories. His unmatched skill has probably made it easier for us to take him for granted. I mean novels in general. View all 8 comments. When I first picked up this book at a used book store, I was surprised at how many pages it was.

But then it was a Stephen King book, after all. As I began to read, many of those pages went by and the story seemed to be moving at a crawl. I was thinking this will be a three-star read at best. Just a redo of the classic "Dracula". Then I began to fall under its spell. The pace picked up and the writing was amazing. Then I was in a trance seeing nothing but a five-star book ahead.

Count Stephen had When I first picked up this book at a used book store, I was surprised at how many pages it was. Count Stephen had made me a believer. A modern day Dracula story. View all 9 comments. Baba wrote: "Nice review of one of early Stephen King's gems. Joe Krakovsky That is why he is a big name, because of his writing, and not just because his name is easy to remember! Shelves: published , fiction , horror , he-says , traditionally-published.

Stephen King's take on vampires. Of course. Self-insertion much? Notably the only character who has good sex in the novel. I'm not complaining about the self-insertion Ben Mears - A priest. A drunk. Fed up with the suffering, abuse, rape, and hate he sees every day. When can he fight the Big Evil? Human evil is boring, apparently. This character e Stephen King's take on vampires. This character elicited no small amount of anger from me. Jimmy Cody.

Classic Stephen King. He's also surprisingly smart, confident, able to kick ass, unflinching, pragmatic, practical and quick-thinking.

Mark Petrie. Smart and well-read, the Van Helsing of the group. Matt Burke. I have conflicted feelings about Susan and her actions. Things I liked about Susan: - She's a reader. Her mother hates Ben and wants her to date and marry some local boy.

Susan, who still lives at home, really puts her foot down and tells her mother where to get off. She also makes plans to move out - even though she'll be struggling financially. A strong, powerful, human scene in which both Susan and Mrs. Norton act and are portrayed as human characters with both good and bad in them.

Excellent writing on King's part. I think he does some amazing work on challenging mother-daughter relationships e. Things I didn't like about Susan and other people in relation to Susan Ben, I'm looking at you Can't stand this sort of "submission to a guy I like" thing, especially and over all with food and drink.

I know this fits in with the times early s but if a man gave me orders ever in regards to what or when or where I was choosing to eat or NOT to eat, he would find himself in some very hot water. I know this statement by him was innocuous - with no malice on his part - kind of like when men tell me to "Smile, you'll look prettier! Again, , so I'm going to try and overlook this If it came from a villain or someone with any kind of evil characteristics, I wouldn't even mention this.

It's only because Ben is the White Knight of the book that I feel it needs to be addressed. But she's not the only one People die as a result. Right after Matt warned them not to split up. They just are overcome with a 'case of the dumb' every time King decides someone needs to die.

It's very frustrating and very out-of-character. It goes like this: The group of heroes meets and discusses the situation intelligently, looking at it from all angles.

Matt tells them not to split up. Someone dies. They go to Matt's and tell him someone's dead. They discuss the situation intelligently and make smart plans. Matt warns them not to split up. They leave. They decide to split up. Someone dies Wash rinse repeat. It's annoying. This only happens in the last third of the book By the end, everyone who's still alive is wearing crucifixes and carrying holy water, whether they are Catholic or not.

Even praying the Hail Mary or the Our Father appears to be an effective way to hurt vampires. Very well-written, very exciting. This is great writing by King. You can vividly see everything in your mind while reading. I especially enjoyed the glowing touch King gives holy objects. When calling on the power of the Lord, the cross you're holding or the holy water you've washed in starts to glow so brightly that you have to squint.

This is a great visual touch that I think added a LOT to the book and to the final fight scenes. Wonderful idea by King and a powerful one. The book is a callback to the ancient role of the Church as protector against things like vampires, witches, and demons. Modern problems what King calls "evil with a lower case e" such as rape, child abuse, incest, suicide, and murder are seen as mundane. Father Callahan, the local priest is "bored" with the idea of facing and fighting this kind of evil.

He longs for the day he can showdown "real" evil - and his wish is granted in the form of bloodsucking fiends who are working for Satan. This evil which garners so much scorn in this book IS real evil.

And it's human evil. Since the Church is supposed to help humanity, I hardly think that it is "weakening" the Church to address these problems, or somehow getting off track with it's "real" purpose of fighting Satan, or something. I can see why King chose to include this tiny thread, after all, the Big Evil is what is the enemy in this particular time and place.

But I don't appreciate the trivialization of human evil, and especially have rage towards any priest who thinks it's boring or a waste of his time. I take umbrage at this idea. Good people live in small towns. Good people live in cities. Crimes happen in small towns. Crime happens in cities. Both small towns AND cities have their benefits and disadvantages, and I have NO idea what is going on with all the small-town hate King slathers on this novel like orange marmalade.

I found it irrational and a bit disturbing. This is very bleak and not at all true. COWARD: A certain character, who is smart and practical view spoiler [ Parkins, the Sheriff, hide spoiler ] leaves town because he knows it's dead and he doesn't want to die. Ben promptly rips him a new one, calling him a coward and a gutless piece of shit. I completely disagreed with King here. Obviously the heroes are brave and stalwart by staying and vowing to fight the vampires and rid the town of evil, but I completely respect and sympathize for anyone smart enough to hightail it out of there.

I felt like this was really judgmental and harsh. I admired the character AND his decision at the end to flee - it made a lot of sense to me and didn't make him any "less of a man" in my eyes. There are good men and women in this story. There is a powerful Evil and a lot of despair, death, blood, abuse etc. I really like that King provides us with hope and also characters who are not disgusting because, let's face it, the majority of the plethora of people in this book are awful people.

Even though King writes here that Satan is a very real and powerful enemy, there's also the unwavering and unshakeable truth that God exists and that God is helping humans to fight Satan. Take that as you will. That's okay - King does a good job with the rest of it, and I can see he was going more ancient legends meet Dracula with it, so I can forgive his all in all, very slight fetishizing of sucking blood. But I'd prefer for it to be absent, and for an author to do away with it for once.

And then there were side characters and side plots that I really wanted more of, but King never ended up fleshing them out, and I was disappointed.

It's a VERY busy book. SLUT: I am slightly concerned and bothered with the glimmer of "thatyear-old-girl-is-a-slut-because-she-has-big-boobs-and-I-want-to-fuck-her" that runs through this novel.

Ruthie as far as I can see never does anything to indicate she's sexually promiscuous, but men call her "slut" and hate her simply because she's gorgeous and they want to fuck her. Women hate her and call her "slut" because she's gorgeous and they know men want to fuck her.

Unfair to Ruthie, who is a small, small, part of this book - we never see her thoughts or see any part of her world, we only look at her through other's eyes. I would throw a fit if I thought King was slut-shaming or, more accurately , labeling-a-woman-who's-most-likely-a-virgin-as-a-slut if I thought he, Stephen King, really believed that - but I don't. Instead, I think he's showing us how people judge others on appearances, and that's okay. So, it's fine - he gets a pass from me on this one.

I found this a bit weird. Matt asks Ben if he's had sex with Susan. When Ben admits he has, Matt tells him that HE'S the one who has to stake Susan - no one else apparently - because he's taking the place of her husband. This didn't make ANY sense within the lore of the book - the rest of heroes stake vampires regardless of if they're related or not. There was just this kind of creepy patriarchy vibe regarding Susan's corpse, though.

And I have no idea why - the 'male relative must stake the vampire' thread is never mentioned again. Also, it really, really upset Ben to have to stake the woman he loved. Why couldn't one of the other men do it? It felt like King was just trying to create drama without having any consistent lore to back it up. Tl;dr - Even though King didn't write a perfect book here, he wrote a dang good one. He's an excellent author - there are chapters in here maybe 6 or 7 out of more than that I know I could read over and over again just to admire how they sparkle in the light.

I plan to rank all of them as I read them, so stay tuned! View all 36 comments. May 05, Vince rated it it was amazing. This is hands down the best vampire book I've ever read. I don't have words so I'll simply say just read it. All right, now that I got all the gushing out of the way, on with the review. The story is about a man named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot, or Salem's Lot by the locals and discovers dark forces holding the town in sway.

I loved every sentence, every page of this book. I've lost count on how many times I have reread it. Everything from the setting, the story, the cha This is hands down the best vampire book I've ever read. Everything from the setting, the story, the characters even the minor ones hold me in thrall every time I read it.

There were moments where I was so creeped out that I checked under my bed a couple of times during reading it. Stephen King is the only horror author who has managed to genuinely scare me. It's a superb book by the master of horror. View all 5 comments. I love reading books multiple times because each time I read it I feel completely different about it. I find new things I missed, I view things from a different perspective.

Each time its like reading a new book. Salem's Lot is a vampire novel but its so much more than that. Salem's Lot is about small town America and the disintegrating social fabric. One of the things I've come to appreciate most about I love reading books multiple times because each time I read it I feel completely different about it. One of the things I've come to appreciate most about Stephen King is his ability to bring out the horror of everyday life.

Salem's Lot is how I imagine a real life vampire attack would happen. The vampire would move to a small insular town and slowly rip it apart. I recommend Salem's Lot to all horror lovers and to readers who love intricately plotted well written stories. Oct 03, J. Maybe the greatest vampire novel of all time. Certainly one of the scariest stories I've ever read. I loved everything about this book.

The audio version is also excellent, narrated by Ron McClarty. Full review now posted! There are few monsters as enduring as the vampire. For well over a thousand years, mankind has told itself stories of preternatural beings who look like us, and perhaps even used to be us, but who now live by draining the life from us. Sometimes, these are just campfire stories, meant to give us a chill and a thrill before we drown them out with reality.

In the past few decades, vampires have taken a big hit in pop culture. Vampires were once terrifying entities, wielding their seductive beauty as a cobra does, to hypnotize and ensnare their victims. But in recent years, we as a society have defanged vampires, so to speak. We have rendered them harmless by giving them consciences and glittery skin, and making them into a metaphor for fighting the temptations of the flesh.

The building horror of what decimated the town, and how quickly and easily most of the townspeople gave into that destruction, is where King really shines. Some of these newly turned are children, which made them all the more disturbing. No one can write children quite like King, be they brave and compelling or terrifying enough to make a person decide against reproduction.

Child and adult alike march to the beat set out for them by their new master, who is everything a vampire should be. An author from out of town, the girl he hits it off with, an English teacher from a local high school, a doctor, a priest, and a child stand alone against an incomprehensible evil. There is one other central player in the story: the Marsten House.

It is a menacing presence hovering over the town, seemingly evil in spite of its inanimate state, which makes it the perfect abode for a monster.

King did a great job of making the house itself super disturbing. King did a great job reclaiming vampires for the horror genre. Keep in mind that this book was originally published in , long before we as a modern society decided that vampires should be lusted after instead of feared, but it was still refreshing to read a novel that gave the bloodsuckers back their throne of fear.

This was a buddy read with my wonderful friend Caleb! Original review can be found at Booknest. View all 28 comments. The scribe has been finding a lot of work in the horror genre lately, having co-written the adaptation of King's It, as well as penning the upcoming It: Chapter Two. He also wrote the scripts for the Wan-produced Annabelle and Annabelle Creation, and has just wrapped filming on his directorial debut, Annabelle Comes Home.

James Wan is also attached to an upcoming feature based on Stephen King's novel The Tommyknockers. Connections Edited from Rumpelstiltskin Details Edit. Release date September 9, United States. United States.

Technical specs Edit. Color Color. Related news. Oct 13 Indiewire. Oct 5 DailyDead. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content.

Top Gap. By what name was Salem's Lot officially released in Canada in English? And all around them, the bestiality of the night rises on tenebrous wings. The vampires time has come. Together they were so great, with their interactions and dialogue so true to their characters.

They each had their own flaws, and you loved them in their moments of strength and bravery. The singular weakness I can think of this story his that while the ending was good, I personally did not think it was on par with the rest of this wonderfully told story. This is not a story for the fainthearted. A brilliant story of vampires and the terrors of the night.

Como resultado tenemos una historia que tiene muchos de los rasgos mas evidentes del estilo de Stephen King con ingredientes para seguir la linea de la tan famosa novela de Stoker. Tal fue el caso de Jhonatan Harker. Como resultado tenemos una buena historia, bastante entretenida, no la mejor del autor pero si una de las mas importantes. Ahh there's something cathartic about reading an old-school vamp novel.

Classic, day-hating, blood-sucking, savage vampires. Exactly how I like them. King goes to great lengths to set the scene early so we learn all about the town and its inhabitants riiiight before evil runs rampant and everyone is picked off slowly.

What's the point of offing people we don't care for? I love reading these old classic King novels because they really do demonstrate why he's so successful.

His stories suck you in and give real chills. They make you part of what's happening and this particular story will have you keeping away from windows at night and refusing to enter dark spaces. There's not really too much I can say that hasn't already been said except that I'm preeeetty sure this story came into being before Star Wars so it was fun to read references to The Force.

I loved the way this terrified me, gave me shudders and shivers and made me think a lot about staying away from the windows. I enjoyed the speed at which everything happened which seems weird for such a long book that spends so much time talking about the town and I loved that it felt like a super classy B-Grade horror film only actually brilliantly done.

So A-Grade, I guess? The characters were a lot of fun I'm not gonna get all feminist over it, it was written in the 70s, after all and I loved that Mark played such a big part because kids are too often underestimated but I think it was quite honest the way Mark believed the easiest.

Kids don't question. They just believe. Also Callahan is the main reason I was driven to read this book because of his part in The Dark Tower series, beginning from Wolves of the Calla. So I loved reading his part but I'm also so grateful for having read that series first because Callahan's ending here is pretty abrupt so it's nice to kinda know what happened to him in the end! Although now it's chronologically messed up for me so I feel like I gotta read that series again. I feel like I'm rambling a bit here so let me just sum up by saying this is a classic.

It's old school King, old school vampires, and it is one heck of a creepy story. Totally lived up to the hype. I just wanna add Barlow's death scene was one of the most epic death scenes I've ever read.

All that description Even if death the dude was creepy AF. It was interesting to get the feel for the town further down the track, but it's not essential. I enjoyed it, but more the ending than the first few pages of slogging. A story this short I'm not really that keen for details on the weather.

To be honest, 'Salem's Lot finished on such a great note so this extra stuff kinda spoiled the mood. So I might come back to this later. Deleted Scenes Same.