'Salem's Lot
Ratings669
Average rating3.9
Super fun and surprisingly frightening at times. Moments during this where I said out loud “oh no please” and stuff like that
Reseña (sin spoilers) de ‘El Misterio de Salem's Lot': https://youtu.be/wrtnaNjHTYw
O busca “Morporkiano” en el buscador de YouTube.
While it took me a while to finish the book, it was worth it. I had read the short story by Stephen King near Halloween and it really set the mood. The short story was GREAT (10/10 if you ask me) and once I found out that there was a full book on it, I just had to read it. Watching the slow take over of the town by the vampires was interesting. I will say, I wasn't a fan of how most of the characters were written. The end wasn't bad and it lead to me want a second book about the characters that did survive.
I blame myself for not getting scared. Watching too many movies(horror and others) has dulled my imagination into a stuporous state. I have reached a point where nothing, except jump-scares, can scare me. And that doesn't happen in books. I really loved this book, just so that I make up for giving it only 3 stars. Writing is excellent. Scary - not so much.
The buildup is fine, maybe tad excessive. For the first time in a book, I actually loved the author describing the sun and the wind and the darkness and such. It felt real, visceral.
“The tongue of darkness seemed to lick hungrily at this kitchen, waiting for night to come so it could swallow it whole..”
Summary: A writer comes to his childhood town(Jerusalem's lot), to fight his childhood demons and hopefully make a book out of it. Only, worse demons await him. The fight of the few good people of the town, first against their own rational minds and then against these umm.. vampires.
“No one pronounced Jerusalem's Lot dead on the morning of Oct 6, no one new it was.”
Post-apocalyptic vibes.
This is Stephen King at his best, but it's still Stephen King and it has everything you expect from him.
That means it's entirely too long and poorly paced. The prose and dialogue aren't that great, either. There are way too many characters. There are sections told from the point of view of 20-something different characters and it's hard to keep track of who's who. And it would also be more powerful if we just saw things from the perspective of a few people.
But it also has some good mystery (or it would if the book wasn't famous) and some frightening scenes. King does a great job of building suspense and making the antagonists truly scary, especially Barlow. In the end, Barlow was a bit too easy to overpower, but Bram Stoker had the same problem with Dracula.
Overall, a good scary story that makes for a great Halloween read.
9.5/10
This book absolutely slaps. I think it's my fourth time reading it and I am just enraptured the whole time. However, I haven't read it since I was like ~21 and I've definitely changed as a reader since then, I recognize that there are some things in this book that I wouldnt appreciate if I read it for the first time now, and now that I've read most of King's bibliography, it's obvious how much his writing has evolved in the last 40 years (whose wouldn't). I still count this among my favorite books ever though, I can't discount how tied to my nostalgia reading the book is. It just feels cozy and terrifying to me at the same time, idk. Still in my top 5 King novels without a doubt.
Good but Stephen king should be banned from ever writing about women — like there needs to be a law
King by name, king by nature.
I walked past this book at Waterstones and had to go back and take it home.
The characters King creates are second to none. They are completely flushed out and real, I don't know how he does this so easily. Each character brings something different to the table, none of them felt like filler.
The story possibly could have been a little shorter, although I didn't want it to end...so I don't know if that makes sense. The way Stephen King writes hits me so we'll. it isn't just characters that make his writing so real, it's the fact he can create a full town that feels alive and moving.
The underlying tension that constantly flows through the story is unrelenting. It doesn't harm the pacing or ever feel that it's too much. It's like a river of slowly running dread that eventually escalates into an alarmingly powerful waterfall!
4/5 stars and would have been higher but I felt the climax could have been a little better.
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Rating: 3.62 leaves out of 5
Characters: 4/5
Cover:3/5
Story: 3.5/5
Writing: 4/5
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yeah
‘Salem's Lot is basically Dracula but told in a much easier way to understand. Though I am not the biggest fan of vampires this was told fairly well. It wasn't a remarkable story but it wasn't utter trash like of his other stories are. cough cough Misery cough cough Tommyknockers. cough cough
I did give it a 3.62 but it isn't worthy of a four. This isn't a horror book to me, though I did like some of the characters I can honestly say the antagonist is lame as hell. I felt like they were a flimsy stick that blew over with a SLIGHT breeze.
3.5*
Me propuse a leer los libros de Stephen King de los años 70's en orden. Este es el segundo que leo en el año.
Mientras lo leía, me hizo creer que los vampiros eran reales. Te inunda en su mundo y es todo lo que necesito en una historia de terror. Me gustó muchísimo.
Por ahora mi top es:
1.-‘Salem's Lot
2.-Carry
this is the 6th Stephen King book i've read and i'm very secure in saying that he is the best author of all time.
I know i'm reading all his very popular work first before i get to his lesser known stuff but his popular work is popular for a reason and i want to know what everyone is talking about
this book is reaaaaaallly good but its the first King book ive rated less than 5 stars.
It was fast paced but the “boss fights” went too quickly and things felt too quickly concluded so the book felt kinda empty??
I loved the characters. King knows how to make you feel like you've known a character your whole life with just one page, its crazy.
I loved Mark. what a legend.
NOS4A2 by Stephen Kings son Joe Hill is the better vampire story in my opinion.
Took much too long to get going though King's writing has a way of making nothing seem readable. There were pages that simply detailed what different families were having for dinner. While I can respect this was to effectively show the slow death of the town, some of it was just boring. Also would be remiss not to mention the sheer amount of homophobic slurs in the book. And this was clearly written when King had a very bleak outlook of the world.
That all said, I did enjoy reading it. The writing was enjoyable, the story compelling, and the dread creeping. A nice dark vampire horror story of a town's slow, sleepy, bloodcurdling death.
So disappointed with this book. It was so ponderous at the start and sooo drawn out during the epilogue. Its such a shame as around the middle I started getting into the old fashioned vampire tale and got pretty invested in the main characters but all that build up was thrown away so quickly that I almost gave up on it multiple times
This book was so easy to pick up and then not put down. The build-up was consistent and the tension did not let up, even when the beats of the narrative slowed. This book was terrifying and I found my fingers shaking even when reading in plain daylight. But for best results, read after midnight, after everyone else has gone to bed, when the wind is blowing just enough to make the branches scratch at your window, when the moon is peaking out from behind the clouds and illuminate your face to reflect in the glass of the window as you check outside for spooky ghoulies.
listened on audio. enjoyed it the second time. I read it in 2017. I think I enjoyed it more that time.
I thought this book was very good although I felt like there was too many characters to keep up with and 2-3 characters also had nicknames so that made it even harder. Also Mark is a little boy that talks like all the other adults. I feel like his dialogue should sound a little more childish. Other than that it was a great freaky monster story.
Una historia fascinante y espeluznante. Me mantuvo siempre revisando si había algún monstruo en el armario cuando me iba a dormir.
I absolutely loved this book, and i could not put it down. I love books with fantasy characters, and this was the first vampire book that I have read that didn't have any sort of fun and whimsical-type elements. The vampires were EVIL - there was no part of them that was nice in any way. So, horror/suspense/thriller combined with some fantasy elements; I adored it.
I've heard it's patterned after Dracula, so if you enjoyed that, I'm sure you would enjoy this. I haven't read Dracula, but it is now definitely on my to-read list.