Salem's Lot By Stephen King (3.5/5)

Hmm. I am in two minds about this novel it seems. On the one hand, i'd rank it as the second most addictive King book i've read (The first being The Running Man) But the other's that I read I occasionally had to drag myself through.

OK, i'll start with the parts I liked first. Two words, Mark Petrie. I ADORED the boy. : ) I would be quite content when I have children for them to turn out like him. A particular highlight was the fight he had with the school yard bully. I admired his intelligence, his courage, his spirit and the way his parents approached him. He was definitely my favourite character from his first to his last scene. He totally stole the limelight for me, I thought he was brilliant. Another character I enjoyed was Matt Burke, I liked the addition of an over the hill teacher pulling together a group of people and using logic to encourage a belief in the supernatural. I supported him in a town where I generally disliked most of the other background characters. With Stephen King's realistic & flawed characters it is often easy to fall into the trap of not seeing any characters as worthy of sympathy or even much attention. Matt, I liked. He had intelligence and a sensible head on his shoulders, I have a weak spot for characters like that. And my final favourite characters were Barlow & Straker, I thought they were brilliant villains. Their sophistication and over confidence about their success was great to read. They actually made me respond to the book more than the death of characters. Rather than being eager to see peole saved I was eager to see those two punished. Particularly when they were proud of their misdeeds. I could see them perfectly in my head, and that's when I know a character is wrote well.

Next was the descriptions involving The Marsten house, I really enjoyed the atmosphere that was created in every scene where the house was involved. I guess i'm still a sucker for the old haunted house vibe in a story. I could feel the house through the pages, I could sense it's character, and see every inch of it. It was a great part of the story for me.

I also really enjoyed the vampire mythology. It felt great to get back to what a vampire novel is actually supposed to be like. I liked the descriptions of the creatures and their patterns. I like this traditional approach to this myth. The Dracula references didn't hurt either, since i've been a fan of that book from a young age. So I am very grateful to this novel for rekindling my love for Vampires, after it took quite a hit from moden pop culture. : )

And as random as it is, I really quite enjoyed Stephen King's Afterword. I liked the insight of his childhood reading and found this more page turning than a few moments of the actual novel. I found his description of his mother's reading habits to be quite heart warming.

Now onto the parts that I didn't enjoy so much. I found the beginning of the book to drag quite slowly and the first 200 or so pages took me over a week to pull myself through. Then however the action kicks in and I read the last 400 pages in a day.

One of the biggest flaws in the book for me was the mortality rate. I understand that this was intentional by King in order to take over the entire town. However, when so many characters die, after a while i'm left not caring. I am desensitised to the deaths and it means very little. Deaths are more shocking and attention grabbing for me when they are rarer. In fact the turning into vampires of most the townsfolk was such a none issue that I felt sure that it must be reversible as some point. I didn't enjoy the "shrug" approach to character deaths.

Another part of the book that I felt hampered my enjoyment of it was the sheer amount of background characters. I understand that King likes to go into detail about basic humanity and their qualities and their relationships and their faults and their sins. But when there are more than 30 names mentioned in passing I start to mix them up or forget them because they are relatively unimportant, so when they reappear I have to try and recollect who they were, and that takes me out of the story slightly. As separate from the story I did enjoy the various characters individual tales and how they were interconnected. But it was slightly overwhelming and detracted from the speed of the main plot, which was brilliantly paced when it was the focus. King also seems to like to focus on the bitter negative side of the human personality as well, the violence, the immorality, the adultery. I don't tend to enjoy having my face rubbed in these things. I can understand the plot device involved in airing issues that often stay hidden, particularly in conservative communities, but they don't generally make for light reading with me. They make me pessimistic about the human race. Though I have come to understand that this is a feature that King uses in all of his books, if I wish to continue reading his works, then i'll just have to get used to it. : )

I also felt that the conclusion was a bit "Meh". The book felt like a 90 MPH race down a road in a sportscar towards a cliff edge, through most of the action and then the final weapon used against Salem's Lot felt a little like getting out the car and sort of lying down and slowly rolling off the edge. I felt like it could have been arranged better.

So I guess this is a bit of a mixed review. This is often my relationship with King. I love the stories but feeled bogged down with the details, and often feel too unintelligent to understand or absorb all the details. I can't believe I actually had this many thoughts on a book that I didn't mark astonishingly highly. I guess it must have made quite an impression. I'm also left with an odd desire to read it again. : )