’Salem’s Lot in Around the World in 80 Books

Mar 31, 2014 Bogdan rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: new-world

The only positive about this novel is that it does not makes vampires cute and good beings, like in Twilight series and other more recent novels. They are evil beings, as in the romantic authors fiction works and as in the folklore tales. The rest is mediocre at best.

Starting from the premise, which is simply to scary the reader with a vampire story. First of all, the setting has nothing scary in it, no matter how much the author tries to convince us. What could be scary in a rural town from Mai The only positive about this novel is that it does not makes vampires cute and good beings, like in Twilight series and other more recent novels. They are evil beings, as in the romantic authors fiction works and as in the folklore tales. The rest is mediocre at best.

Starting from the premise, which is simply to scary the reader with a vampire story. First of all, the setting has nothing scary in it, no matter how much the author tries to convince us. What could be scary in a rural town from Maine? It did not scared me and also failed to make me believe vampires exists, at least until the final page, and this is why I will give it a 1.

Regarding the form, you cannot expect to much from these kind of novels written specifically in the popular fiction genre. Basically, Stephen King writes crisp and clear novels but usually unartful. The cyclical story with the intro starting after the main conflict resolves, spoiled some of surprise regarding the ending and this is why I will give it a 1 for form.

In terms of originality, I did not read too many other vampire story. I read Dracula (I am Romanian and would be a shame not to) and Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. I am not sure how much documentation Stephen did before writing it, but for sure it has some points in common with these novels and some that I did not noticed before. I will give it a 2 at originality.

The characters are all pretty schematic. The usual stereotype characters that can be found in any pop fiction novel set in rural norther USA. Nothing out of ordinary and in such a situation, I will rate it with a 1.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, except the fact that it is a quite long novel, it is not excelling with anything at this criteria. The story within the story is another potential element that can raise the difficulty, but it was not too well constructed. So I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, it failed to make me believe in existence of vampires, not even it sounded too real or plausible. This is why I will rate it with a 1.

The last criteria is edition. I notice many wrong letters in this electronic edition, perhaps as a result of a bad proof reading. There were not too many other important things to notice about it, so I will rate it with a 2.

To summarize, I lingered until I reached the last page of this long novel, as I did not managed to fully buy up the story. I am also not a fan of vampire fiction. Perhaps some other readers with more interest in the topic would have enjoyed it much more, as it is not a terribly bad novel. All in all, my final rating for this book is 1.43, which I will round to a 1 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 1.43 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+