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    'Salem's Lot
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    'Salem's Lot
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    'Salem's Lot
    Ebook588 pages10 hours

    'Salem's Lot

    By Stephen King

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    NOW A NEW FILM STREAMING ON MAX • #1 BESTSELLER • Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book.

    "A master storyteller." —The Los Angeles Times

    When two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work. In fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town.

    With this, his second novel, Stephen King established himself as an indisputable master of American horror, able to transform the old conceits of the genre into something fresh and all the more frightening for taking place in a familiar, idyllic locale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateMay 6, 2008
    ISBN9780385528221
    Unavailable
    'Salem's Lot
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for 'Salem's Lot

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    • 5/5
      This Is Very Good, Maybe This Can Help You
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    • 4/5
      My revisit of Salem’s Lot a couple of years ago reminded me of what a great writer King has always been, even if this one also has that ‘I wrote this mostly as a student feel’ to it. I'd read this originally in the 80s when I was either in middle or high school. I devoured so many of his books and then in the mid 90s just stopped.

      This one is a perfect vampire tale. Like many of his books, it uses childhood fears mixed with modern problems of adults to build tension. It also use epistolary tricks to heighten the verisimilitude leaving the reader unsure of what they think about the things that go bump.

      Don't skip this book but leave a light on for yourself.
    • 4/5
      My #stephenking #readathon with @ame9022 and @wendysallison continues with ‘SALEM’S LOT. Here, SK tackles what would happen if a vampire lord took up residence in a small New England town.

      While I would call this a more typical SK book as opposed to CARRIE, this is still clearly early on in King’s writing career. His attempt to juggle multiple characters and narrative threads through the last third of the book is a little clumsy and confusing. Knowing what his writing is like now, it’s easy to see where he was trying to go with the plot, but he wasn’t the polished writer he is today.

      There are plenty of creeptastic scenes in the book, and the main characters are all fleshed out for the most part. It was definitely an ambitious book for such a young writer, and part of me wonders what it would be like for him to revisit the book now and polish it up a little, knowing what he knows now as a writer.

      #stephenking #horror #salemslot #vampire #vampires #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #bookstagram #book #bookworm #booksbooksbooks #bookreview #frommybookshelf #frommybookshelfblog
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars
      The only thing that knocked this down a peg was that there were so many characters and a lot of them had similar names! Like why do we need a Matt, Mike and Mark? Sheesh!
      I loved Mark though, he was awesome when I could remember he was 12 and trying to help as much as he could. The story was engaging and well paced. A top contender for my favorite King!
    • 4/5
      A classic (for me) that I probably read, near to when it first came out, at least when it came out on paperback. And the copy I read was probably 40 years old, a delicate balance of comfortably holding the book and not have it completely fall apart. Vampires come to a small town in Maine. Horror ensues. But, to be honest, not as much as I remember. Maybe I'm jaded. Its an early work for him, so he's working out his style, starting in the middle and going back, lots of characters (maybe too many in this case) and really great visual imagery in the world building. Good, but not great. Definitely worth the time for any King fan, if you've never read it.

      They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bead, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual satisfaction of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.
    • 5/5
      this book is kick ass. yet another top favorite King book for me. its also considered a classic among many and i have to agree.

      this book does great at creating a small town and showing all these different characters, who they are and what they do before things get dark. it also creates some great atmosphere wish makes many scenes chilling. its a great and different take on a vampire story for the time it came out.

      i love pretty much everything about this book but if there is one thing i have to point out and its very minor. is that the romance between Ben and Susan seems rushed and happens way too quickly. now i get that this is a horror book about vampires so i understand that when someone reads this book they dont want to read 50 pages of sappy romance crap. i was just surprised that the romance happen so fast. but like i said its a very minor complaint that wont get too much in the way of things. it just took me by surprise as all but overall this book is great and is yet another top favorite
    • 3/5
      My first true King novel although I have read two or three of the Bachman books and some King short stories.

      The pacing and plotting are great, but King’s vampires are so conventional as to be kind of dull. In fact the scariest character in the book, for me, is the Big Vamp’s human helper/familiar who transacts daytime business on his behalf.

      Also got a bit distracting that all the characters had the purest 70’s white bread names imaginable. Jimmy, Matt, Ben, Ann, Mark, Susan…

      Still a ripper of a novel, but I’m going to try and find a more interesting baddie for my next King.
    • 3/5
      The first King novel I wasn't really enthralled by. Alternately tedious and exciting. It felt like 3/4 of the book was set up, and then the final parts weren't even that great. Pretty verbose descriptions that began to wear, too.

      Certainly not bad, however.
    • 2/5
      I've been a fan of King's work for over thirty years, and I finally got to read this recently, as I am currently going through some of his back titles that I've missed. This one was quite disappointing for me. It hums along nicely for the first 530 pages, slowly building suspense and introducing some well-drawn characters. I was enjoying it thoroughly. However, at the 530-page mark, there seems to be a continuity error of epic proportions, something which goes against the story's rules as established up until that point. Normally, a thing like that wouldn't bother me overmuch, but here, this error occurs in a very crucial scene, a scene which shouldn't have happened at all if King had been following his own rules. Because of this, I lost all trust in the narrative, and with it any suspense that may have been generated. It became a slog for me to finish the book, but I managed. There are also, in those remaining pages, some serious flaws, especially an incident where a major character does something very much out-of-character, again at a crucial moment, which further destroyed the tale's credibility for me. So, this is easily the weakest King novel I've read to date. A real surprise, as he is, in general, a consummate storyteller. I rate it two stars, just because of the strength of the earlier sections
    • 4/5
      I'm pretty sure that the first Stephen King book I read was The Shining when it first came out in 1977. I love King, but I somehow never got around to reading his prior book which was 'Salem's Lot, until now. While it was nowhere even close to being as suspenseful as The Shining, it was still a very solid book with great atmosphere and characterization. But it really had no scenes that I will remember 20 years from now like the Lincoln tunnel scene in The Stand or several scenes in The Shining. The creepy factor was as creepy. The good news is that I should have no issues sleeping tonight. Still a really solid read, just not heart pounding like so many other of his works.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good book set about some classic Stoker style vampire action. I read it as a bit of a palette cleanser to all of the common modern vampires with feelings type stories in pop culture at the moment, and wasn't disappointed. If I had to complain it would just be that this book is a bit too close to Dracula for thinking of this as anything special or extraordinary.

      The other reason I read it is because it plays a large role in the dark tower books, so I looked at it almost as an extra story added into the series. I'm not sure if that improved or detracted from my reading, but as far as I know it's impossible to unread something.
    • 4/5
      A Masterwork of Horror

      Ever wonder what Bram Stoker would make of the industry that has sprung from his groundbreaking 1897 Dracula? Though not the first vampire novel, it proved to be the one that launched hundreds of sharp-fanged anti-heroes. It’s an industry and a character writers, film studios, and television have worked practically to death. Yet, we never seem to tire of the Count and his brethren.

      Which brings us to Stephen King, the writer most will acknowledge as the modern master among masters of horror and the macabre. For his second outing, he chose vampires in a small Maine town, and readers, even now, are the luckier for it. You can say this about most of King’s early works, Carrie, The Shining, and The Stand (first half): it’s a masterwork of terror.

      What makes ‘Salem’s Lot, as well as these others so appealing, appealing enough to read a second time years after your first reading? It boils down to small town life, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, clear writing, terrific pacing (at least in these early novels), and powerful, literal descriptions. King puts you in the situation and the action and because his characters are much like his readers, you can easily project yourself onto the pages. In short, he’s completely relatable.

      You’ll find no better work among his pile of writing illustrating King’s strengths. Could there be a more representative American small town than the Lot? Don’t many small towns have a sinister house occupied, or once home to, the town curmudgeon (not a killer, for sure, but scary, especially in the eyes of children). The Lot has a rhythm to it, a way of living that stretches back years, a dull sameness that locals like and set their emotional clock by. Like any town, though, it’s not perfect bliss, or even close to blissful. It’s relatively poor. It’s filled with its share of misfits. It even has a town dump that many who grew up in small towns will recognize. Above all, everybody knows everybody else, maybe a virtue but which contributes to its succumbing to evil.

      Even Ben Mears is a small town boy. He’s published a couple of books, true, but hasn’t achieved any kind of fame and no fortune. He returns to his roots to face a fear that has haunted him, and to get a really good book out of the experience. That fear resides in the old, abandoned Marsten House stilling atop a hill overlooking the Lot. Horrible things happened there long ago, long before when Ben was a boy.

      Ben gets more than he bargained for. He gets his greatest fear multiplied a hundredfold in the form of Barlow, an ancient vampire come to establish residence in the Lot coincidental with Ben’s arrival. Poor Ben loses so much: a new love in the form of tragic Susan, new friends in the forms of Matt the high school teacher and Jim the doctor, the new novel he’s written deeply into, and most of all, any comfort and joy in living. Yet, with young Mark at his side, he does gain a new and pretty meaningful purpose in life as one who now can see behind the curtain of quotidian life, like that that the Lot enjoyed before Barlow’s arrival.

      There’s one other characteristic of King’s writing that unfortunately ‘Salem’s Lot doesn’t have: stunningly memorable characters, among them religious lunatic Margaret White, rabbi fan Annie Wilkes, pyromaniac “Trashcan Man,” the list is long. Vampire master Barlow could have been such a character, ancient, big, nasty, egotistical, and above all, wonderfully bombastic. It isn’t often said about novels, but ‘Salem’s Lot would have benefited immensely from deep background on Barlow. Nonetheless, ‘Salem’s Lot is still a heck of a powerful horror yarn.
    • 5/5
      I though this was a very good horror novel. This is the second King book I've read with the other being Carrie. I'm trying to go through his work in chronological order so I will be reading The Shining next. I liked Carrie a lot but I think I liked this book more. With how popular vampire books were for a while it seems a lot of people feel like they've read to many vampire books but actually haven't read too many and most of the ones I read were young adult books. Even if I had read a ton of vampire books I still think this would have stood out. I loved the main group of characters and was worried about them and sad when bad things happened to them. Of all the characters in this book I liked Mark Petrie the most. I can't tell you exactly why I liked this character the most he just really spoke to me. This book also scared me more than any other book I had read. Usually horror books don't scare me as much as horror movies do but I found this to be very scary. I was reading parts of this before I went to bed and every little noise would scare me. I've been on a real horror book bender recently and I definitely want to keep reading scary books in the near future.
    • 5/5
      This is my second read through of this classic. It's funny, because I found out that in King's first novel, my personal connection was that I was the same age as Carrie White. This time around, the personal connection is that the town of 'Salem's Lot died on my 13th birthday.

      I'd forgotten how much I loved this book. I mean, I knew I loved it, but I forgot the depths of my love. Yes, there's the odd clunky line in the novel, but overall, my God, King's descriptive powers were something to behold. Unbelievable.

      And, for a novel about vampires, I think the thing that originally blew my mind was that the book didn't specifically mention vampires anywhere on the cover, and I didn't quite catch the reference of the girl with the drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. So, when I read it the first time, and I found out for sure it was vampires at a point that was well over a third of the way into the novel...well, it was mind-boggling.

      Reading it again, it's a wonderful concept that no publisher would allow today. Today, the vampires would be spoiled in the cover copy, and the author would have to bring them in quick. That's one of the many things that make this just a brilliant and gripping story.

      For a couple of days, I was a fifteen-year-old kid again, experiencing this for the first time in the living room of our old house.

      Thank you, Stephen King.
    • 4/5
      I’m a fan of Stephen King, both his flat-out horror (IT and The Shining come to mind) and his “the real world is scary enough” sort of books (Misery and The Stand). It’s hard for me to think of many other writers who have such a conversational style that draws me immediately into the narrative, as if we were sitting around a campfire together.

      I read ’Salem’s Lot (1975) many years ago and remembered being thoroughly creeped out. So when I came across it as I was rearranging my bookshelves, I decided to take it for another spin and see if my reaction has changed over the decades.

      Um, no. Still thoroughly creeped out, still pleasurably horrified by this tale of a small Maine town colonized by a vampire. This was only King’s second published novel, but many of the touches that would later become hallmarks of his work were present: Ordinary people behaving in extraordinary ways, the reader having just enough of an edge to get scared before the people in the book do, and of course, the heroics of a child. It seems clear that King sees children as the real heroes in this world, as in this passage:

      Before drifting away entirely, he found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarity of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. … The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.

      If reading about vampires and the terrible things people do under pressure isn’t your bag, that’s totally understandable, and you should give this one a pass. But if you’re nostalgic for some good old-fashioned horror, you could do much worse than make a visit to ‘Salem’s Lot, Maine. Just make sure you leave before the sun goes down.
    • 4/5
      Vintage Stephen King. Written fortunately before vampires became respectable.
    • 5/5
      A modern day Dracula. I haven't read The Dracula yet, but still I really enjoyed this one. The monologues, tangents & little scenes were each fulfilling, concise & well thought out.
    • 5/5
      I'd thought I had read this novel in high school, and had forgotten some of it. I started glancing through the Ebook version of it, from my local library, and realized that none of it seemed familiar at all. Thinking that maybe I had read so many books in the interim, and this is what kept me from remembering it, I checked it out and set about refreshing my memory. Who doesn't love and older-version, younger Stephen King novel?
      It turns out I had skipped this novel entirely, for some strange reason. Maybe I was too far gone into the novels of Raymond E. Feist, Piers Anthony, Ursula Le Guin, Mercedes Lackey, and David Eddings at the time, who knows. But I am glad I read it now. It seems to have helped me enjoy it that much more. What a gloriously tense couple of nights I have spent, immersed in the darkly shadowed pits of King's early imagination...! What fun! I sincerely love old-style King. I am quite happy, now.

      5 full stars. If you haven't read this novel yet, why don't you give it a try? It might just knock your socks off. ;)
    • 5/5
      It is very easy to see the influence of Dracula on this book, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable, or original.
    • 4/5
      When I read a book that a good chunk of people agree is one of the scariest they’ve ever read, I expect it to be scary. And ‘Salem’s Lot got a lot of people’s votes for being King’s scariest novel, with a good chunk of people admitting to it being one of the scariest books they’ve ever read.

      Two notes: First, I admittedly cannot compare the scariness of this book to any of King’s other works because this is the first book of his I’ve ever read. Second, I read a lot of this during the day time, and everyone knows that horror is best read at night when everyone else is asleep, but what can I say? I’m a morning and day reader. Evening and night are for video games or Netflix.

      ‘Salem’s Lot is a book about vampires, and an old creepy house, but more than that it’s about a town. ‘Salem’s Lot or just The Lot is how the locals refer to Jersalem’s Lot, Maine.

      Writer Ben Mears returns to The Lot as an adult, after having spent a short part of his childhood there, at the same time that the Marsten House, the site of a murder-suicide and known to the town for being creepy as hell, gets bought by two men who plan to open an antiques shop in the town. Shortly after his arrival, things start getting weird. Two boys disappear in the woods, and only one returns home. From there, the story takes off.

      I really enjoyed this book, and it was a great read for the month of October, what with the main antagonist being a vampire. It did make me want to play the Sims and create some vampire sims or re-watch Castlevania.

      There are a couple of scenes here that are creepy, and after reading the prologue you know only two of the main cast likely survives the goings-on in town, and I did feel a lot of anticipation for what would happen to all the characters. I felt particularly attached to Matt Burke and Father Callahan, despite knowing they probably wouldn’t make it to the end.

      Otherwise, though, I didn’t feel as scared as I expected to after all the people who said this book was actually scary. It is scary, of course, but not in the way I was expecting, outside of a few dark scenes at the beginning of the book.

      The way vampirism spreads through the town reminds one of a disease. It’s like reading a story set during the black plague, not knowing who’s going to catch it next, but knowing that not everyone will make it out alive.

      It’s not scary in as gory of a way as others in the genre might be. Sure, there is some gore, but the bulk of that takes place in the last part of the book. I didn’t mind this, and the anticipation of what was going to happen to each of the characters kept me turning the pages- most days I read over 100 pages at a time.

      The characters are what really shine. There wasn’t a single member of the main cast that I disliked. Mark Petrie was probably my favorite of them, but I liked Ben, Matt, Susan, and Father Callahan. I didn’t feel like I had enough time with Jimmy to care about what happened to him all that much- and when it did happen I felt worse for Mark.

      As for the writing itself, there were scenes where the writing really shined- the scenes at the beginning that actually made me feel a little scared are the best example of this. But for most of the book the writing ranged from good to fine. There were some places that I ended up skimming because there was a little too much description of things that didn’t have anything to do with the plot.

      I really enjoyed this book, and I may end up changing my rating up to 5-stars, depending on how I feel about this book after I’ve a week or so to digest it. I would highly recommend this, and it’s the perfect time of year to read it, so if you haven’t I suggest picking it up.
    • 4/5
      My 3rd favourite King after It and Pet Sematary. Scared the whillikers out of me as a teenager, but as a mature reader the flaws that come from being King's second published work are obvious. Still, an exciting and well-written exercise in fear, with tropes that would become so familiar and polished in later King works make their first appearance here. Ditto for the characters. In Ben Mears and Mark Petrie we see early signs of Bill Denborough, the first hint of Pennywise makes a brief early appearance as Mr Flip, The Lot is an early draft for Castle Rock. Very enjoyable, although vampires have lost much of their cachet due to maudlin over-sentimentality and this deprives the book of a lot of its oomph.
    • 4/5
      Terrifying at times (e.g., don't read it alone in a house in an isolated location). Love the premise of small towns just disappearing and how easily this can occur.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book because the author did a good job of building the tension throughout the town. For a book with a ton of characters, you never feel overwhelmed or confused. Each interaction is very realistic to a small town and lays some ground work for later developments. The only relationship that seems out of place is the intensity of the romance between Ben and Susan. It just doesn’t quite feel right but in no way deters from the rest of the book.

      The group of “heroes” is very diverse and even though not necessarily connected in their everyday lives their interactions do not seem forced or unauthentic. The character of Mark Petrie is just so adorable you want to wrap him in your arms and protect him from the evil. Matt Burke is an interesting character when compared to Mark Petrie. Mark Petrie is a child and is immediately accepting of the reality surrounding them as is Matt Burke who is a 60-something school teacher. Matt’s lack of resistance to the idea of evil is very refreshing and gives his relationship with Mark Petrie a nice twist. Dr. Cody is a very logical and scientific person yet he also has enough respect for the intelligence of the others in the group. The main character in the book is Ben Mears and he is a nice normal guy caught up in something unexplainable. Mr. King takes this into consideration as he walks us through Ben’s emotions and actions which are very true to his character. The reader feels each part of Ben’s struggle in their own gut and is rooting for him as soon as he drives into Salem’s Lot.

      Ron McLarty did a fabulous job on the narration. His ability to convey the tension, the creepiness and the fear of the characters was phenomenal. I could really get into and root for the characters and I feel Mr. McLarty deserves as much of the praise as does Mr. King.

      The prologue by Stephen King was good but I found his elevating of the Ben Mears’ character to hero status over the other characters was not correct. It did not do the other strong heroic characters in the book enough justice.
    • 4/5
      I disagree with the simple "make them repulsive and yucky" argument. Vampires can be scariest when they deal in ambivalence and paranoia. Repulsiveness just turns them into straightforward monsters where you know where you stand and what you're supposed to run away from. Ok, monsters and running-away can be scary too. But I think the human/monster, desire/disgust, fear/curiosity type ambivalences are where the vampire figure really comes into its own. But you need to make those contrasts really bite, not like those drippy Twilight emos. The vampires in "True Blood" are agreeably scary. They can be nice, they can be refined, they can even be love-lorn -- but they are still powerful, unhuman, and capable of great harm. The vampires in "Being Human" are similarly portrayed, and so they work. Vampires go through phases. Before Stoker they were walking corpses driven by the need for blood, and Stoker humanised them and we all know what happened over the next 130 years. And it's not like Meyer was the first person to make cuddly vampires: “The Count from Sesame Street”, Count “Ducula” and the terrible 80s TV show The Littlest Vampire… do I need to say more? We don't need King to tell us how to make them scary again, it'll happen on their own, they're too much of a use trope not to. Besides, I don't mind vampires being nice to look at if they're also capable of murdering you and not really giving a shit. The vampires in “True Blood” are sufficiently violent and amoral, but unfortunately people often associate the series with Twilight because it's become popular at the same sort of time. The two couldn't really be much further apart. The literary (as opposed to folkloric) vampire has been fatally attractive since Polidori's Lord Ruthven (based on Byron), Gautier's Clarimonde, and Lefanu's Carmilla. At least Mitch in Being Human holds up the Byronic and dangerous tradition. While also being cute and funny, he's capable of picnicing on a train-carriage of commuters, when on a Bonnie-and-Clyde vengeance kick with the deliciously naughty Daisy. Vampires are inevitably sexy: they're all about oral fixation, eros-thanatos complexes, a neat twist on Transubstantiation, and often an effective Queer metaphor. Meyer's attempt to recruit them for her 'no sex before marriage' Mor(m)on family values is utterly misguided…Vampires also should be able to move around in daylight, but weaker. The disintegration in sunlight was invented to show off the special effects in Nosferatu. (They don't sparkle, either!)
      I suppose it would be nice to get back to really traditional vampires, but zombies have filled that niche so I think we're stuck with pretty vampires. I'm not going to complain about it though ;)

      I remember having read somewhere Sam Mendes was planning to do a movie based on the Garth Ennis epic, "Preacher". One of the main characters in it is the vampire Cassidy, and King would recognize him instantly as an Irish correlation of "The Walking Dude". He's charming and gleefully amoral, one of the best characters around. One of the most hilarious parts of Ennis' story is when Cassidy encounters some Anne Rice type vampires in New Orleans. Cassidy is unimpressed with pale, swooning poets who want to be vampires, and ends up giving them lessons in what vampirism is really all about. Not for the faint hearted.

      “‘Salem’s Lot” is one of the biggies for me. “'Salem's Lot”, “Revival”, and “The Stand” are the King novels that I have read over and over, for pure pleasure. I don’t much like other early ones, like “The Shining” and “The Dead Zone” and “Night Shift”; they just don't quite work for me in the same way. His later work is also spotty--I haven't even read all of it--but “Bag of Bones” was probably the best of the bunch. When I'm looking for a common denominator of my two favourites, what I see most clearly is that I love it when King assembles a team, a gang of friends, who work together to battle the forces of evil. I really enjoy the way that King depicts how friendships can form and grow and be solidified, and how different pairs of friends in a larger gang of pals typically have their own individual dynamics.

      “'Salem's Lot” has a central pivot point in Ben Mears, but part of the joy of “The Stand” and “IT” is that the gangs of friends are even more balanced. Yes, Stu is probably the central pivot of “The Stand”, just as Stuttering Bill is probably at the center of “IT”--but the rest of the friendship circles in each of those novels are given the texture and time to also be legitimate leading characters. I've always been a Haystack man, for example, when reading “IT”, in part since I never was a chubby kid. “'Salem's Lot” also establishes the King formula of the slow build, followed by a long and intense action phase; it works because the build-up gives the reader the time to know the characters and the setting, and to develop some relationships and fondness and context, which gives action sequences and scares weight and consequence. Also, the pay-off for King is long and involved--it isn't like a two hundred page build-up followed by forty pages of excitement--he rewards the readers' patience for the first half of a novel by making the entire second half action-packed, as he does in “'Salem's Lot” (and in “IT” and “The Stand” the action-packed segments are even heftier).
    • 2/5
      This King novel started well. There was good intrigue and the characters were established, the plot awaiting development, and the atmosphere dark and incipient. However, I found the novel did not take off adequately and I was disappointed with the turn of events and the way it played out. That is not to say that it is a bad novel, but it was simply not to my taste.

      2 stars.
    • 4/5
      This review is posted on Reading with AngelaRenea

      I read this book as part of my Stephen King project (AKA I am reading Stephen King). Before I started it I read Dracula because King says that it heavily influenced this book's writing. I'm really glad I did that, and I recommend that everyone read Dracula before they read this because the comparisons are amazing. This was the story that Dracula is hyped up to be! Where Dracula failed, King has managed to succeed spectacularly!

      I love the way that the town it's self is a major character in this book. King spends a lot of time, arguably even too much time, setting the tone of the book by taking you through the town, but I thought it was just right. I enjoyed the other characters as well, particularly Matt, although somehow I missed that he was older initially! Once I realized that he was, I loved him more because, well, I love old people that's why.

      I was told that this was one of Stephen King's scariest books, and I'm not sure where I stand on this. While I don't think that the actual plot scared me at all, King did a great job of setting a tone. The descriptions of how the characters themselves were feeling was so well written that it actually made me a little jumpy (...scared...) particularly walking in to work. In the dark. At night. At the full moon.

      I will say that one of the big reasons that I did not give this book a 5 star is that it stuck a little too close to the Dracula story. It was better written, more readable, more enjoyable, with a better pace and written in a more believable way, but it was essentially Dracula. Where it did stray was the parts about the house, and the fires.

      I think that the ending leaves it open for a sequel, or mentioning in another book (I'm told King likes to do that) so here's hoping! Basically if you're thinking about reading 'Salem's Lot do it and just skip Dracula!

      What book do you think is just a better version of something else? Happy reading!
    • 4/5
      Inte lika bra som jag minns den då jag läste den första gången i högstadiet, men ändå den bästa jag läst av Stephen King.
    • 5/5
      When an ancient vampire moves into the tiny Maine town of 'Salem's Lot, it's not long before the vampires take over in this homage to Dracula.

      This is classic Stephen King. There's a small town that is taken over gradually by something evil, an extremely creepy house, lots of scares and gore, and a small band of ordinary people trying to battle something extraordinarily evil. It may be a little long-winded but it will always hold a special place in my heart.

      Read because I like the author (1980s).
    • 3/5
      Really, I'd give this 3.5 stars. Although I have read all of King's recent books, I've read only a handful of his older books. I'm trying to remedy that now. If you don't know, Salem's Lot is a vampire story. King doesn't really bring anything new to the legend, but it is still a compelling and dark read. And, I will not be looking out of any windows at night for a very long time - so don't come knocking, scratching or calling out for me.
    • 2/5
      King's vampires ?
      Ben Mears is a writer that is returning to his hometown Jerusalem's lot after 25 years of being gone. He is coming home to write a book about the infamous Marsten House which has changed owners since he last graced the town with his presence. The new owner happens to be a vampire! Will Ben, his new friend Matt, and his new love interest Susan ever make it out of Salem's Lot alive?
      Ugh, King, King, King... sometimes you hit it and sometimes you miss it. This one was a miss for me which it's a little distressing because it happens to be Stephen King's favorite novel that he has written. Not to mention the subject matter is one of my favorites. However for some reason this book and I just did not click. I wanted so much to like this book and I gave it my best shot.
      The book is not badly written. It is written in the normal Stephen King style and is easy to follow the storyline. However also in the normal Stephen King style, there is tons of extra information that aren't really necessary for the story. This is what dragged me down with this book. The extra information just made it monotonous for me to read. I will say that I did however like the cliffhanger at the end. Very nicely done. If you like Stephen King and vampires you will probably like this book.