Rating: 
Summary: Still King's best after all these years
Review: He's done work of a near equal level elsewhere, but I still think that 'Salem's Lot is my hero Stephen King's best single novel. It's scary, filled with great characters and scenes, and it rarely goes too far over the top. It's also become the model for many of his later books, or even the mold.
The small town setting is wonderful, with everyone getting just enough face-time that we know them as well as we'd know our neighbors. So then they can disappear. Barlow is so creepy it's amazing. And it contains my favorite horror novel line of dialogue: "I WILL SEE YOU SLEEP LIKE THE DEAD, TEACHER!" That line scared me.
Vampires are wonderful things.
Rating:
Summary: What can I say???
Review: This book is great for people looking for a good horror novel!!! DO NOT READ IN DARK, ALONE!!! Its about a man named Ben and this girl he meets in his hometown. Ben is a writer and he came back to write about this old house called the Marsten House. It is definetly a great buy!
Rating:
Summary: Bone-Chilling
Review: 'Salem's Lot is one heck of a horror novel. As in most Stephen King books, the story centers arounda thirty-something novelist living in a small town.
In this case, the novelist is Ben Mears, a writer with two not-so-good novels. After the tragic death of his wife, Ben returns to Jerusalem's Lot, the small town he lived in as a child, to get rid of a lingering nightmare by renting out the house that provoked it. When he gets to 'salems Lot, life couldn't be any better. He is reunited with childhood friends, and meets an amazing girl. But this small town isn't as innocent as it seems. And there is one little problem.
Someone has bought the object of Ben's nightmares, the Marsten house.
Someone who is never seen, and never heard, and whose lights are on all night long.
When people begin to disappear in Jerusalem's Lot, Ben must re-evaluate his beliefs in the supernatural, and fight the force of evil that has entered small-town America. This novel is excellent, being as psychologicly frightning as it is in all other senses. It has a wonderful cast of characters, all of whom you get to feel like you know personally. If you have to read only one Stephen King novel, let this be it!
Rating:
Summary: King's best
Review: I'm sorry if people liked IT or Bag of Bones better, they just don't hold a candle to this quick, fun, scary novel. It gets to the point, and has no filler. And King is the king of filler.
I was really spooked out when vampires took over the town, scratching on windows and racing aginst time to get all the rest before dawn. Anne Rice's [silly] vampires are a joke compared to how well crafted and scary this novel is.
Buy and enjoy. Right when King was hungry for success, before he started running out of ideas (Christine, Cujo).
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, fast read
Review: Really enjoyed this SK work. I am quite a King fan and found this older, early work to be on par with some of his best work. Contrary to some other reviews, I really enjoyed the early portion of the book and found it essential to create the atmosphere for the final two thirds of the story. The town is as much a part of the story as the vamps and I would shy away from calling its introduction "boring". Finished this in three sittings, a very fast-paced, exciting, and surely fun book.
Rating:
Summary: Vampires in the Lot!
Review: Exciting...heart-pounding...terrifying! What words to describe them. A bit boring at the beginning but with patience(a lot of pages' worth) you'll see what this book really is. King tells the suspenseful adventure of a writer against two powerful vampires that I would REALLY recommend to King lovers.
Rating: 
Summary: SMALL TOWN HORRORS
Review: Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second novel about the slow disintegration and take-over by Vampires of the small New England town called Jerusalem's Lot, shortened by the insular locals to Salem's Lot. King effectively uses a deserted house to strike a foreboding atmosphere in the story line. Terror and death resonate throughout the house due to its previous occupation by a psychosexual lunatic who committed a murder-suicide many years before. King manages to successfully transfer the ancient vampire myth into a modern-day setting. Lucid descriptions enable the reader to build-up detailed images of a diseased, and sin-striken community where a hotbed of simmering gossip and ugly secrets lurch beneath the surface. Believable characters also add dimension to the story. The protagonist, Ben Mears who grew up in the town returns to write a novel. Mears soon teams up with Mark Petrie, a young boy fittingly obsessed with monsters and horror movies. The unassuming villain, Mr Barlow, who owns one of the town's shops, holds the post of head vampire. Barlow does not make an appearance until half way through the story. However, the fact that the villain is hidden behind the scenes helps to provide a steady buildup of impending evil. When a local boy is found dead, the town commences its spiral dance into disorder and chaos. As the unsuspecting residents are killed off one-by-one, a dreaded sense of hopelessness descends upon the town. Salem's Lot is more than a story about a plague of vampires unleashed on a defenseless town. King's real talent for generating fear lies in his ability to drag social taboos kicking and screaming into the reader's full view. In King's first novel, Carrie, the reader is stunned with graphic descriptions of menstruation. In Salem's Lot, King breaches cultural taboos by incorporating reactions to grief and seedy small town politics into a vampire centered theme. In Salem's Lot, King's skill clearly lies in exorcising two-fold fear. Salem's Lot incorporates manifestly evil characters tapping into common social anxieties. One example includes the disturbing scene at the boy's funeral. The grief-stricken father hurls himself at the coffin hysterically shaking the body to wake the boy. King plays on the discomfort readers would experience if confronted by unconcealed reactions to grief. The father's act of wrenching the body from the coffin slaps the reader with the kind of "inappropriate" emotions most of us would rather not deal with in others or ourselves. Salem's Lot continuously breaks down the reader's sense of security by unearthing raw and deeply rooted social fears. King also tackles the inherent anxieties held by many people regarding corpses. In Western cultures the dead are considered to be unsanitary, hence the American obsession with embalming. King leaves the reader squirming in high levels of mental resistance to this particular issue. Salem's Lot is a slow-paced narrative, which some readers may initially find boring. However, it is this intricate sketch of everyday life that helps to create a sense of impending evil througout the book. The slow start is also used to prime the reader for the nightmare about to seep into the story. This then better facilitates chaos overthrowing normality. As any good horror novel should, it plays upon the common fear of losing control. Salem's Lot has a hidden social commentary about the facade of normality blanketing the conflicts and crosscurrents pulsing beneath countless communities. In many respects Salem's Lot reflects the sobering sentiment of Peyton Place, in its depiction of the underbelly of life in a small New England town. Both stories highlight the failings and weaknesses of human kind. Both books leave the reader with a feeling of pity for the petty residents. Stephen King has gone on to write faster-paced novels such as The Stand (1991), Desparation (1997) and Bag of Bones (1998, however Salem's Lot is a chilling horror story with a cliffhanger ending which adquately compensates for its slow start.
Rating:
Summary: good but could have been better
Review: this is my second king novel (my first being the gunslinger) and was not only impressed but entertained. having the desire to reading something that would genuinely frighten and terrify me, i decided to check out this book. the beginning was very slow, but enjoyable. mr. king starts off by introducing us to the town known as salems' lot and its people who inhabit there. mr. king takes a lot of time to get us acquainted with his characters, which for me was a good thing because his characters were very believeable. as the story progresses, i found myself getting excited and hoping something major was going to happen, but usually never did. i think mr. king did an excellent job at developing suspense, but i think he should have had a little more action. i really don't think there was enough interaction with the characters and the vampires and i was hoping mr. king would portray them to be blood sucking monsters with a taste for the macabre. instead the vampires were more like the classic sterotype of hollywood, but nevertheless entertaining. overall a good book with scarry parts, but i could see where mr. king could have done better.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book, definitly worth reading!
Review: I am twelve years old and a big fan of Stephen King. Believe it or not, I read this book in four days! The reason for this is that it was so good, I couldn't put it down. This is a modern story of vampires killing, (or turning more people into vampires)in a small, Maine town of Jerusalems Lot. This book is good 'cause you'll look out the window into the dark and say, "I'm definitly gonna lock da windas' t'night!" You know what I mean? It's pretty scary. Well, if you haven't read it, you should. Seppi Suter
Rating:
Summary: Salems Lot Book Review
Review: Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second book (1975) about the slow disintegration and take-over by vampires of the small New England town called Jerusalem's Lot, shortened by the insular locals to Salem's Lot. The story starts with the mundane, everyday happenings in the life of the town. Jerusalem's Lot is watched over by a deserted house that resonates terror and death, previously occupied by a psychosexual lunatic who committed a murder-suicide many years before. The introduction is imperative to setting the scene of a very believable background. King manages to blend the ancient vampire myth in with a modern-day town. King's vivid descriptions help the reader to build-up detailed images of a diseased, and sin stricken community that is being exposed to its own dirty secrets and is hence rapidly falling to pieces. Interesting characters are also introduced such as Ben Mears who grew up in the town and has returned to write a novel. The young boy, Mark Petrie also adds lively contrast to the Mears character. Interestingly, Mr Barlow, the head vampire is hidden away in the story, which helps to provide a steady build-up of tension. After Ben Mears arrives in town, a local young boy is found dead. A disturbing funeral scene follows the discovery. The boy soon joins the ranks of the undead killing off the town's inhabitants. As the unsuspecting residents are found dead one-by-one, a dreaded sense of hopelessness descends upon the town. Salem's Lot has a hidden social commentary about small town facades of normality blanketing the true evils and secrets beneath. Salem's Lot ends with a real cliffhanger that is well worth the slow start.
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