There was a time once when vampires were ruthless predators and not the misunderstood brooding and essentially harmless creatures. Ahhhh, good old scary times...



Vampire stories have been around for a long time - after all, people love a good scare, and what is more terrifying than a monster showing up at night and sucking the life essence out of you? But leave it to Stephen King to turn the terror up a notch, add a whole new layer to it. How? Simply - using the winning formula that he continues More...

I find Stephen King repetitive, his characters not all that likable, his endings BAD. But I like silly potboilers featuring vampires. Don't judge me!! I'm an vampire fanatic, and Salem's Lot is one of the undead classics, I was bound to read it. Ok, I was bound to listen to the audiobook, if I were to be precise. Hiking on a trail in Carpathians (same Carpathians that count Dracula had his monstrous castle in), getting soaked to the bone* (oh how I hate the treacherous mountain weather!), with m More...

Salem’s Lot is the first and only Stephen King novel I’ve ever read.

To be honest, this is a short review because I didn’t finish it. The problem wasn’t that King wasn’t a compelling writer who has obviously honed his craft. Every single chapter was interesting and immersive. I found myself drawn into the world he was spinning and deeply intrigued by the mystery of it all.

However, I suppose I couldn’t read it because this book is what I imagine it would be like to live with ADHD. It bounced aroun More...

I hate vampires. I hate them and I hate books about them. I hate the way they're romanticized and sexualized and just generally presented in modern fiction. That's why I loved this book. King doesn't shy away from the fact that vampires are creatures of horror and he presents them as such. They are vile, violent, and everywhere, and that's the way I like them.

The characters pitted against them, particularly the priest, are compelling and almost too human to face the vampires. And, in the end, th More...

It did not affect Stephen King's bottom line at all, but it took me a long time to get around to reading one of his books, mainly because I never really enjoyed horror movies, especially the slasher/splatter variety, which, for some reason, is the kind of story I thought King told. One reason King's finances should remain secure despite whatever happens to publishers is the fact that large numbers of readers who ignored him for years eventually discover him and pick up a few of his books. I know More...

First Sentence: Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.
This book is like new year's eve. It's 11:59 and you're counting the seconds for the new year to arrive and when you close your eyes when there are only 3 seconds left, all the people start to scream and cry and make out and throw up on the carpet. And it hits you: "Oh! It's January!".

Why? Because as i was reading i found myself at the end of every chapter saying "what the... that was kind of scary". Not through the More...

While not quite as insanely good as Needful Things or The Stand, this is still an excellent, deliciously menacing tale of vampirism come to a small New England town.

Evil does reside in 'Salem's Lot before the arrival of Straker and Barlow, but it's of the more commonplace, human variety; the mother who beats her baby, the husband who beats and rapes his cheating wife, spiteful small-minded gossips and the grasping real estate agent whose greed and willingness to turn a blind eye allows the vampi More...

City folk have a distinct misconception about small towns. We tend to believe that they are tranquil and innocent. That the denizens are wholesome and full of family values. But, we don't see the hidden rot that lurks beneath the sleepy facade.

Stephen King does a lot to shatter that myth with 'Salem's Lot. This a horror novel about a vampire who destroys a town from the inside out. This is a horror story about the darkness that we don't see clearly (or maybe we ignore) about our friends, familie More...

Something's amiss in the town of Salem's Lot. The body count is piling up. What could be at the root of this trouble? It takes a few hundred pages for it to become clear in the text, but I can't help but think this picture of a person with two puncture wounds in her neck on the cover of my edition might be a clue . . . . Probably werewolves. Or mummies?

As close observers of my profile will know, I'm quite the Stephen King fan. This is one of his earlier novels, and I think it shows. The writing' More...

This is the fifth Stephen King book I've read so far, and each time I read one, I feel like I'm practically a part of the story. Unlike certain books, you don't have to torture yourself into getting past the first few excruciatingly slow chapters to find something interesting.

I love the fact that King's characters all seem like people you'd meet off the street; real, not too righteous. Even the bad guys have a streak of good, usually. 'salem's Lot is an incredible book due mostly to the depth Ki More...

read during my High School Years

I Remember: being distinctly unimpressed, but still enjoying it overall... efficient but unremarkable... the narrative seemed too thin, it lacked richness or resonance... a pair of wonderful villains, armed with some good lines... a kid vampire floating outside of another kid's window, asking to be let in - scary!... i wanted so much more, but far from a bad book... the book felt pretty equal to the miniseries.

It's really good. It's the sort of genre book that would work even if there was no supernatural content or even horror-based suspense, just because the setting and characters are so well-drawn.

“That above all else. They did not look out their windows. No matter what noises or dreadful possibilities, no matter how awful the unknown, there was an even worse thing: to look the Gorgon in the face.”


When novelist Ben Mears returned to the rural Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot – a town of church steeples, tree-lined sidewalks and quaint homes – he was hoping to put the demons of his childhood experiences in The Lot behind him once and for all. All goes well as he makes progress on his new book More...

4.5
I was always excited to read this one, so usually this means it's not as good as I planned. Wrong here!

This was a great vampire book. I didn't know until I was reading it that it was King's second. I can tell as I like his early writing a lot; to me he got too long winded later on. Here he takes his time to build the story and you get to know and care about the characters well, there is a lot of ominous foreshadowing and build-up that will clash together later, and everything unwinds at a en More...

What Ben Mears did on the very last page of 'Salem's Lot, it was as if he flicked that first domino, the one that would send the other dominos to tumble and fall, forming pretty patterns.
This novel, King's second, was far more ambitious and far better, than his debut, Carrie. The premise was simple: vampires are a-coming to a small town in Maine. Their agenda was also simple: they need blood to stay alive.
The haters would say this book is slow-paced, boring. Not enough action. A total waste of o More...

Unbelievable as it may be, I'm a newcomer to Stephen King. I decided to start with this one, since it appeared shorter than most and I'm sick to death of 800 page books. I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I got seemed to be a pretty garden-variety vampire tale. Yes, there are flights of discourse on the state of evil in today's world, and yes, there are vibrant descriptions of various typical small-town characters and their tawdry doings, and yes, some of the action scenes are really horrif More...

Christ - everybody: back in the car. NOW.

Yesterday, I took a stretch break in Ritzville, Washington. I couldn't help myself: I put my hands on my hips, looked up and down the empty avenue and said, out loud, "Things just aren't the same in Salem's Lot these days."

It's not a quotation from the book, mind you. Rather, a nod to the power of this tale to color one's opinion of the small, sleepy town just off the road.

I even stepped into an antique store that could have been the Barlow and Straker - More...

March 10, 2012 Huh, well. Just ran across this old review, which now calls for modification. I stated here that this was my favorite King novel, but that distinction now belongs to 11/22/63. Just keep 'em coming, Stevie.

I read this in high school, and re-read it in the '90s. It remains my all-time favorite Stephen King book. A lot of people say The Stand is the best King novel, but I like this one better. It also happens to be the only vampire story I've EVER really liked. I couldn't even get th More...

Interesting way to do a story about vampires. Very good suspense. The ending was barely happy enough for me.

This is not a fun and entertaining read. It’s suspense. We get to know many people in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, which is well done and interesting. Good dialogue and events. I needed to take notes to remember them all, which I didn’t mind. The vampire Barlow and his human servant Straker are bad. But the thing that upset me the most was the mother who beat her ten-month-old baby. Other More...

I am a novice to Stephen King's works and am just now reading his novels in chronological order. After reading Salem's Lot, already I can see why he has the reputation of master storyteller. The vampire story has never been much of an interest of mine, but his depiction of the vampire's seductive power certainly stimulated my interest. This book was hard to put down because it had momentum and continued to have momentum from start to end.

When it comes to scary, I'm a total wimp. No horror films for this girl. For years, I was too scared to pick up a Stephen King novel. Fortunately, I could cover for my cowardice with the Lit. major's excuse: intellectual snobbery--King is for the masses. But then I read The Dark Tower series and had to eat my words. I loved The Dark Tower and decided to read some more King. So I dove into Salem's Lot. Not as scary as I thought (although there were a couple late night moments when I didn't dare l More...

This is the first book I've read of the amazing author, Stephen King. It was the scariest vampire story I've ever read. The characters were well developed and the Marsten House is like a modern version of Dracula's Castle. This is classic vampire fiction. I'm definately going to read more books by Stephen King.

Salem's Lot was first published in October 1975 and was only Stephen King's second published novel. 1975 - that is over 37 years. Think about that for a second.

What astounds me is that the story still feels fresh even given the time that has passed since it was published and the glut of vampire novels that have been written in the last 35 years. And, yes, it will still scare the pants off of you.

From stephenking.com: "Author Ben Mears returns to ‘Salem's Lot to write a book about a house that h More...

This review may contain spoilers!! It's also published on my Blog

Now before I tell you anything about the well-thought-out plot or the genuis writing in this book, let me give you this advice: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IN THE DARK. I mean it. Stephen King's always had the talent to scare me shitless with his books (except of Dreamcatcher, that bored the hell out of me) but this one is really one of the scary ones.... If you expect gloomy and brooding vampires you're cleary one the wrong path - it's More...

The Town Knew Darkness
(A Book Review of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot)

Far more complex than his debut Carrie , Stephen King ups the ante in his sophomore hit ‘Salem’s Lot, published in 1975. Raising the bar of horror from a quaint character study of a girl coming to terms with her powers and her eventual maturity, King opts to a much larger grasp of the terrors that haunts us (or more specifically the American way of life) by digging into the darkness hidden in the human heart and focusing on the More...

review by Meesh

*Warning: possible spoilers ahead.*

So, today I was scheduled to do a review of Dacre Stoker's book, Dracula - The Un-dead, the sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Why am I reviewing 'Salem's Lot instead? Because I haven't been able to read the other book, not in the three weeks I've had the book and have tried and tried to read it. Many times. Considering I was once a professional editor, it kind of astounds me that I can't finish the book. Hell, I can't even start it really. So I'll More...

I think most people have heard of Stephen King, even more so of Salem's Lot the horrifying vampire novel. I've had this book on my shelf for a while but never found the correct time to read it until the evening of 31st October. I wanted a spooky book to read for Halloween and this was the perfect choice. I knew the reputation this book had, King is the King of horror after all, so I was fully prepared for the frights it held inside. What I wasn't expecting was to love the book as much as I did. More...

It's hard reading a thirty-five year old novel about vampires in the 21st century considering what has happened to the genre in the past fifteen years. It's very easy to think of this book as just "another damn vampire story". Then you look at the date of publication and you're tempted to put it back on the shelf and move on. But wait. Consider these couple points before you do that and then make your decision.

"Salem's Lot" was one of the first novels to put vampires in "contemporary times". Of More...

This book takes about 300 pages to actually heat up. It wasn’t so dull that I wanted to put it down, but I was still thinking “Come on Mr. King, entertain me.” There are many other reviews on this one, so I will keep it short. I will mention a few scenes that had my heart beating fast:

*The girl, who shall now have a place on my ‘She is Too Stupid to Live” shelf, decides she’s going to tromping through the woods to sneak up on the King Vampire’s house and kill him--alone. At least she acknowledge More...

I stayed up far too late last night watching the Rob Lowe miniseries adaptation and now I'm jonesing to read the book, despite chortling a bit over Rutger Hauer and Donald Sutherland's performances as an elderly gay vampire and his elderly human lover watchdog. What captured me were the voice overs about the nature of small town evil, and I'm hoping that's what I'll get in the book. I would enjoy some good creeping horror as Halloween approaches.

I also have the David Soul 1970s TV miniseries on More...