Blog Critics Review Of Salem's Lot

New Salem's Lot Cover
photo credit: Lilja's Library

I really enjoyed Elizabeth Periale's review of Salem's Lot, posted at Blog Critic's.  (HERE)

She calls Salem's lot a "a wonderful old-school vampire story, where the vampires aren't sparkly, or romantic, or James Dean cool — they are rampant, foul-smelling, and very, very evil."  YES!  That's what vampires are supposed to be!  Wow, I'm getting hungry to read this novel again!

Pariale quotes King as saying about the book, "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism ... I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"


And, of course, what about those characters?  Any King novel is really driven by the people who inhabit the book -- or in this case, Salem's Lot.  Pariale gives King credit for doing a "wonderful job" developing memorable characters.  Salem's Lot has several!

Finally, I really think this quote is right on! --

'Salem's Lot is a time capsule of sorts. So many of the main characters are working in the dark from one another. King could never have written the novel in the age of cell phones. Clearly a product of the '70s, it is no less a scary read today.  'Salem's Lot packs the same punch, the same apprehension, whether read late at night or in the clear light of day. As scary as it is, there is also something incredibly sad about the novel. King pulls 'Salem's Lot apart piece by piece. We watch the town disappear. The horror the reader experiences, the inevitability of the story and the characters' fates, is in exact correlation to Ben and his friends' dread at their eventual confrontation with Kurt Barlow.

The full review is HERE.