A review by zakcebulski
Salem's Lot by Stephen King

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

FINALLY. I finally loved a Stephen King book.
I feel that I was always missing out on something regarding Kings work. I have read a handful of his books- the ones described to be "the classics" or highly acclaimed; 11/22/63The Shining, The Stand, IT, Misery, Pet Semetary and I thought some- The Shining, 11/22/63 and Misery were good! But, I did not at all care for The Stand, IT or Pet Semetary.
There is just something about the characters in those books that just makes me not want to continue reading them. I haven't the foggiest as to why. I hear a ton of praise for King's writing of believable dialogue- but, this is usually something that off-puts me from King's work.
But, not Salem's Lot. I absolutely loved this damn book.
Starting off, the plot is so simple- it is a man who returns to a town wherein he once lived, and had a traumatic experience with a house there and comes back to write about it. That is when things start to go bump in the night.
I have to immediately praise King's willpower to have the vampire threat show up in a slow trickle rather than BOOM vampires. Had I not known what the book was about, I would have thought that with the Glick boy's disappearances, that we were dealing with a child killer with Straker (as heinous as that would be!). But, it is the gradual introduction of the vampires that we see the true threat that is looming.
King does an exceptional job of showing the ripple effect that occurs as vampires start spreading and it helps immensely to build the tension in the reader.

I appreciated so much that King took the time to flesh out so many of the characters around town so that when they met their end they were less nameless red shirts.
I also appreciate King's willingness to kill off more or less every damn character he gave a name to. Like, toward the end of the book it is fucking everyone dying like good god, man. Though, I do think that killing characters for the sake of killing them is silly, and I don't like reading a book where there are fake stakes (haha). I think that this book called for the deaths of so many characters so that it was illustrated well how truly fucking dismal the situation had become.
I think that this is where the book truly scared me. I have said many times that I have never been scared by a book in a way that a horror movie scares. I have been grossed out, but that genuine tension I feel is lost when I read books- probably through my fault. But, King nailed it here.
He did this by making truly creepy imagery in regards to the early vampires coming and accosting their prey at windows. There is something in the imagery of an undead teenage tapping on the window with their grotesque nails on the window that truly unnerved me.
The other way which King amazingly crafts terror is by means of shows how out of control the vampire plague is. The rapidity of the deaths of the townspeople is so well done that it is truly scary when we realize that the main group is tasked with combating these insurmountable odds.
Speaking of the main groups- I liked all of the characters quite well. Ben, Jimmy, Susan, Matt, Mark and Father Callahan are all great characters.
I especially liked Mark, Father Callahan and Susan. I appreciated the resourcefulness of Mark, and how he is so knowledgeable at a young age. I loved the complexity of Father Callahan, wherein he is dealing with a doubt of faith and how that aids to lead to his undoing. And, Susan, I thought was a character that could have fallen in to the trap of being a typical poorly written female character- which King is notorious for doing. But, Susan, I thought, added a good amount of complexity with the mid-20s girl who is struggling to find herself with the looming oppressive force of her mother. And, she does! She rises to the occasion which very unfortunately leads to her death.
Susan's death is one that I truly did not see coming. I was anticipating King to have written this where everyone dies but Ben and Susan make it out together. Not only does that not happen, but, Susan is killed off so quickly and out of nowhere, that it truly shocked me. 
I like that King wrote all of these characters to be people, and we grew to know them, just as quickly he starts chopping them all down. 

I think that the big bad of Kurt Barlowe is a wonderful villain. I like that though he does have the extreme feats of strength at his disposal, he prefers to outwit his enemies by challenging them to fight their inner demons and cause them to doubt themselves. 

I loved this book. Did this book turn me in to a Stephen King fan? No, it did not. Did I come out of this book interested in reading more King in the future, or re-reading books I did not like originally, yes, it did. 
I thought that this was the perfect book for the Fall weather, a few weeks before Halloween!
 
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