I hadn't been planning on reading 'Salem's Lot anytime soon, but the other day I was playing around with the LAPL website and discovered how easy it was to check out books for the Kindle... so I figured I should try one out to see how well it worked.'Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second book and has all of the usual tropes that show up in his later works... the protagonist is a writer, it is set in a small Maine town, characters have psychic flashes, a child plays an important role, etc... This time the story centers on vampires and how they are able to take over a remote town in just a few days. And these aren't the romanticized type of vampires, these are the violent bloodthirsty kind. There are quite a few scary scenes and I was surprised at how willing King was at killing off characters throughout. He also builds tension up very well in the first half of the book when the town suffers a rash of disappearances and accidents and no one yet suspects that it may be the work of something evil. I enjoyed the book overall but I could have used a bit more characterization of the main vampire. I feel like King didn't really explore his motivations very much or try to give his actions any justification.
While reading it I couldn't quit thinking of the book as a small town version of They Thirst by Robert McCammon which came out a few years later. Maybe because that book was set in Los Angeles I liked it a bit more... I'll give 'Salem's Lot a B+.
No comments:
Post a Comment