'Salem's Lot Review

'Salem's Lot by Steven King is a must-read, and I'm telling you that off the bat because spoilers will ensue in this review, and so I feel compelled to tell you now that you should not only read this book, but buy this book. Treasure this book, and read it once a year for the rest of your life. Not only are the characters compelling, but they all feel dynamic, a characteristic many popular mystery novels sorely lack. The setting is wonderful, and the plot unfolds with greater and greater speed, until you literally cannot put the book down. It's like rolling a small snowball down a massive hill; it starts slowly, plodding along with determination, spinning once or twice and gathering more snow. But soon it moves with terminal speed, picking up great chunks of snow until at last it barrells down the hill, able to kill a man if he were to stand in front of it.

So hopefully by now you have the idea; it's a good book, so read it. Starting off, King opens with a strange but intriguing prologue which leaves a lot of questions for the reader, and that's a good thing. It doesn't feel tacked on, and while some of the descriptions of the Lot itself are lengthy, they're written exquisitely, so they pass by smoother than warm butter. Soon we are introduced to our lead character, Ben Mears, a writer returning to 'Salem's Lot to stir up a new book and hopefully cast out some of his inner demons in the town. I found Ben's character to be quite likeable, and there's really nothing more to be said there. He soon finds love in Susan Norton, a younger girl who is at odds with her mother (a decent sub-plot there), and he finds a few friends around the Lot, some of whom will be important later. I won't mention their names now, for fear of spoiling too much about the book, but I will say that all the characters are very well written.

Now for the plot, and boy what a doozy it was. It starts off innocent enough, just a writer coming back to live in his quiet home-town to write a book, but after the disappearance of two small boys, he begins to wonder if there aren't some more sinister forces that have come to reside in his town as well, and soon those musings become much more than mere thought. Of course I'm not going to dissect the whole plot here, but suffice to say that it doesn't drag whatsoever. I found myself lamenting the need to put this book down when I had to sleep, or go about my other work.

Part of the reason this book stood out to me was that the Lot itself feels very lively. I never got the full map in my head, but the chapters titled "The Lot" took me through enough of the towns functions for me to feel like it was quite a real place. King illustrated the lives of many of the town's residents in just enough detail that they'd be remembered when they showed up in later "The Lot" chapters, but not so much as to drag the plot.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a chiller if the plot didn't get dark, but when the turn comes, it's not like some other books of a similar nature, where the plot turns on a dime and the story goes from innocent to indecent in a hurry. King carefully lays out the plot so that the reader is slowly brought into the supernatural world, instead of being thrust into it.

So now we come to the spoilers, and the last part of the review. Once again, if you have any thoughts about reading this book, please just read it. But anyway, this book is about vampires. There. That's the big spoiler. I only put it in here to say that 'Salem's Lot is among the best renditions of the legend that I've come across. Final verdict time. If you enjoy horror that's bone chillingly deep, which feels grounded in reality due to it's characters and setting, and which turns into a book that you can't stop turning the pages too, I highly recommend 'Salem's Lot. Truly, one of Stephen King's classics.