Rating: 
Summary: PREETY SCARY
Review: I'M NOT USUALLY AFRAID OF MOST NOVELS, I EVEN READ 'THE STAND' BY STEPHEN KING AND I DIDN'T GET ANY NIGHTMARES...BUT THIS ONE WAS DIFFERENT..FOR SOME ODD REASON VAMPIRES SCARE ME OUT OF MY HEAD...ESPICIALLY WHEN TOLD BY STEPHEN KING. IF YOU SAW THIS MOVIE, AND THINK THAT THIS NOVEL IS GOING TO BE STUPID BECUASE THE MOVIE WAS..THEN FORGET THE MOVIE.BECAUSE THEY DID A HORRIBLE JOB ON THE MOVIE...SALEMS LOT STARTS OFF WITH A NEW GUY MOVING INTO TOWN TO WRITE A NOVEL ABOUT SALEMS LOT, WHICH IS THE NAME OF THE LITTLE TOWN. VERY SOON WEIRD THINGS START TO HAPPEN...SOME KIDS OUT AT NIGHT ARE MISSING FOR DAYS, AND WHEN THEY ARE FOUND ONE IS DEAD, AND THE OTHER IS NEAR DYING...THEN A MAN DIES MYSTERIOUSLY...BY THE END OF THIS NOVEL THERE ARE FEW SURVIVORS IN THE TOWN..ALMOST EVERYONE IS BITTEN, AND TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE...I WILL NOT TELL YOU THE SUVIVORS BECUASE I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE IT AWAY. I NEED TO WARN YOU AGIAN..DO NOT READ THIS NOVEL IF YOU ARE SCARED EASILY...I DON'T GET SCARED BY MOST NOVELS, BUT AFTER THIS ONE, I BROUGHT A CROSS TO BED EVERYNIGHT FOR A WEEK. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE YES IF THIS REVIEW WAS HELPFUL.
Rating:
Summary: The Town That Knew Darkness...
Review: Along with THE SHINING, SALEM'S LOT is the standout work of Stephen King's early years. Familiarly called "The Lot," by its inhabitants, the town is, at least on the surface, an idyllic American haven whose citizens go about their daily routine in peace and harmony taking little note of the outside world. Ben Mears, a semi-successful novelist who lived in The Lot as a child, returns to the town seeking the peace and quiet necessary to write a new novel. Instead, he and a small circle of friends slowly realize that an ancient vampire has settled in The Lot and is preying on the townspeople. Ben, with the help of Mark Petrie, a local boy, ultimately destroys the King Vampire. However, this victory is a hollow one, as the bulk of the townspeople have already joined the ranks of the undead, effectively destroying the town. Along the way, Ben loses his girlfiend to the vampire and Mark's parents are killed. Of the three other friends who try to help them, two of them die by the novel's end, and the only survivor is tainted by the vampire's blood and becomes a Cain-like pariah. As its title indicates, the book is really about the town as an entity, and King uses the numerous secondary characters to paint a portrait of a town already half dead to the world and filled with a peculiarly American kind of evil. The citizens of Salem's Lot are a rather small-minded, selfish, and petty group of people, cordial to one another on the surface, but gleefully gossiping about the latest bit of scandal, and busily impugning everyone else's reputation behind closed doors. Even before the actual arrival of the vampire, Salem's Lot is a village of the dammed and the dull, crowded with brutal drunks, lazy motormouths, child bullies, greedy businessmen, stupid or cowardly police, and vapid housewives. Everyone appears to be hostile and suspicious of outsiders, and contemptuous of the world of ideas and the imagination. King uses his considerable skills of character development to turn the American fantasy of "perfect" small-town life on its head, excoriating the townspeople for their blithe isolationism and smug complacency. Providing no more than lip service to religion, and secure in their dislike for the strange and the unusual, the citizens of Salem's Lot make perfect fodder for the vampire. King's six heroes (three of whom die before the novel's end) are all unusual types distinguished by their fine minds and familiarity with the realm of the imagination: Ben is a writer, Matt an English teacher, Susan an artist, Jimmy Cody a liberal doctor, and Mark a bright boy with a taste for the macabre. While all of them, to some extent, appreciate the homespun virtues of The Lot's culture, none of them are comfortable with the town's insularity, xenophobia and mental dullness. Ironically, the refusal of The Lot's inhabitants to accept anything but the most quotidian vision of reality proves to be their undoing, and their thinly-concealed mutual contempt makes it impossible for them to defend themselves when danger does arise. The supernatural trappings (mostly blatantly lifted from Stoker's DRACULA), effective and suspenseful as they are, are actually the icing on the cake of the story. The real horror of this book is in King's rather disturbing and depressing portrayal of the true-blue "American" mind, as represented by that most American of places, the small town and its people. This book was made into a TV miniseries in 1979 which concentrated on the vampire aspect of the book and missed its deeper rhythms, thus trivializing the tale and turning it into just another Gothic shocker. King himself revisited Salem's Lot in the short story, "One for the Road," available in the NIGHT SHIFT collection, and has said on several occasions that he might write a sequel. I hope he does, as his fictional town of Jerusalem's Lot has haunted my dreams for many years, and I would love to know what happened to Father Callahan, whose faith failed to match Barlow's!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing Writing from Stephen King
Review: I have just finished reading this book, and Salem's lot was worth every minute. This is the only book i have ever read by stephen king, and i look forward to reading many more thanks to this book. Although i have to admit some pieces of the book seem a bit sluggish, it is very intricate and detailed. It is a great experience, and i suggest for everyone to read it!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Vintage King. Best vampire novel I've ever read.
Review: This is the only vampire novel I've read that's come close to scaring me, and scare me it did. I finished reading it for the 3rd time (the 1st was 15 years ago and I read it again 5 years ago) & I finished it in two days. I think King's works from the 70's & early 80's were by far his best stuff & this is one of the great ones. You have to try it for yourself to understand what a good storyteller he is. King describes a typical small New England town with in-depth characters that slowly but surely begins to be colonized by vampires. The story is so well written that it's quite believable...much better than anything I've read by Anne Rice. There's a number of edge-of-your seat moments & the climax is quite dark. There's no total triumph of good over evil here...at the end you don't know if the vampires or the humans will ultimately prevail. If you haven't read King before this is an excellent place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Bone Chilling Book that will scare you to death
Review: Salems Lot was one of the best novels I have read in the past year. This book really got me wondering if there really is vampires because he makes it seem so real. This book made the hair on the back of my neck stand up for long periods of time. I get the chills just thinking about the book.
Rating:
Summary: King is amazing!
Review: This was the first SK book that I ever read. After this book I was hooked to the style that only King can acheive. He is amazing in writing horror. I actually was scared reading this book and at one point I put it down to go upstairs to where the rest of the family was so I wouldn't be alone. (serious) Since this SK book I have read 11 more of his books. I'm currently hooked on the Dark Tower Series and can't wait for the Fifth to come out. Every one should read this book because it is one of King's best. Hands Down.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage King, classic horror
Review: This is your typical Stephen King - small town in Maine, events that become frightening real, etc. The best part of this is doubtlessly the town of Jerusalem's Lot itself, the various characters make it a classic example of small town America. The story itself follows "Dracula" very closely, even mentioning the novel a few times. And though many parts of the plot are borrowed from Bram Stoker, the setting makes this completely King. His characters, as usual are full and generally likeable and intriguing. Great descriptions - to be expected! As a note I generally do not like vampire stories, I often find them to be derivative tales. This one has a few new concepts - mostly dealing with religion (King's spirituality is quite intriguing in my opinion). The images of vampires hovering outside of windows and asking to be let in quite disturbs me - just in the way he presents it. The only reason this novel is not given five stars is that King did borrow so heavily from another author, but did it with class and style. Also, this novel was fairly predictable because the tale of Dracula was so different to me. Although most of King's vintage horror novels follow the same series of event (find out what bad thing is, stop bad thing for a bit, bad thing comes back wreaks some vengeance, good guys kill bad thing) this needed a bit more surprise.
Rating: 
Summary: Salem's Lot to be desired
Review: I approached this thinking it was one of THE titles by one of the best writers in the genre. Disappointed. It's the same hackneyed vampire yarn in a modern setting. Seen it, read it a dozen or more times. King writes quite well so I finished the book but I was expecting new twists, innovative plot, unusual characters. Oh well, we learn from experience.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen King has done it again!
Review: Once in a blue moon, a well-written horror novel comes along and it makes you feel wonderful to be frightened by the magical realm of the supernatural. 'Salem's Lot is perhaps one of those novels. It would neither make your hair stand on its roots nor curdle your gore but your flesh would undoubtedly creep under your skin. 'Salem's Lot depicts modern deviltry against a sweeping contemporary New England backdrop-classic Stephen King territory-notorious for its vampirism, witchcraft and other forms of the supernatural. It could brag of being not one of those unbridled spate of pretentious and puerile pastiche with hackneyed plots devoid of any semblance of credibility that lately clutter the bookshelves. King's wittily-weaved tapestry of a byzantine and ingenious yarn is based on the premise that the disembodied spirits of the dead in the form of vampires can become reanimated and return to haunt and terrorise the living. As the unheralded novelist Ben Mears returns to 'Salem's Lot, a Maine resort town, to write about an enigmatic and formidable mansion that has intrigued him since his childhood days and to exorcise the terrors that used to haunt him. He gets entangled in a web of spine-tingling occurrences that leave a growing trail of missing persons and dead bodies behind. Mears' endeavour to corroborate his suspicions that there exists an evil power equally or more powerful than the power of good forms the crux of this novel. The denouement is climactic, transporting us into a chillingly bizarre milieu where the daring protagonist, Ben Mears, hammers a stake into the gaunt and cadaverous Barlow's festering soul, apparelled in an effectively black sepulchre hue. The lugubrious atmosphere further enhances the denouement. Unlike those past stereotypical horror novels which cloud our conscience with washout plots, lacklustre and pedestrian narrative that ramble at excruciating and fluctuating paces, 'Salem's Lot is in the right sense of the word credible and leisurely paced. Though the plot can be convoluted and complicated at times, King's writing was not overtly bloated with extraneous dialogue which would otherwise interrupt the novel's rhythm. King's keen ear for dialogue and prose rhythm is evident throughout and with his gripping psychological insights and background detail, a sense of menace is palpable. And with this novel he has done it again by making sleeping at night a nightmare.
Rating:
Summary: One of his weakest
Review: To say that this book is one of Stephen King's weakest isn't the same thing as saying that this book is bad--far from it. The story is entertaining and his storytelling style is wonderful. Of all his books, however, I think that this one suffers from the most problems. My biggest beef is the near about face that the story takes about halfway through--the first half of the book consists of a few hundred pages of great character development and backstory (which could be considered boring by some, but not me), while the last half of the book reads fairly close to a straight rewrite of Dracula. After finishing the book, I couldn't help but wonder what I'd gone through the first hundred pages for in the first place, since they have little or no bearing to the resolution of the novel itself. One of the main characters is decidedly lacking in development (though the most likely explanation for that is that it ended up on the cutting room floor, since you read a couple of deeply fleshed out encounters with our young hero early on, but leave him behind as the narrative continues), while another is overdeveloped--how much do you really need to know about a person who basically vanishes just as soon as events really start rolling? Basically, the book suffers from a feeling of disjointedness, as though the author was trying to do a little too much with what he had. On the one he's trying to develop the characters into interesting and engrossing individuals, while at the same time he's attempting to retell a classic story and keep the plot moving at a certain pace. Perhaps if King had tried to simply tell his story, rather than building up his characters to no real benefit, the novel would be a stronger piece. As it is, the book isn't a bad read, but it's not one that I'd strongly recommend to anybody but the devoted King reader.
|
