Salem's Lot

Aside from King’s Dark Tower novels, I think Salem’s Lot could be my favourite. Arguably it lacks the depth of The Shining, the terror of Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the plot twists of Duma Key. Yet, the plot is consistent, the characters have dimension and the vampires are real vampires. I think, linking this to my favourite of King’s works the reason why I liked the book so much is because it acts as a ‘keystone’ to the tower, the link is found in the character of Father Callahan and with the deep, almost religious symbolism. However, I am not meant to be reviewing King’s Dark Tower series, I did that long ago, as the title of the review indicates, I’m meant to be talking about the quirky town King created, its time to talk about The Lot.

The story follows a large cast of characters, a trait that King repeated in his latter works including Needful Things and Under The Dome. The main character, the ‘hero’ is a writer (once again, a trait of King’s novels both IT and Misery come to mind), Ben Mears has returned to his childhood home following the death of his wife. Mears does not merely return to The Lot to overcome his grief, the real reason behind his return is the clichéd haunted house on the hill, known as the Marsten House by the locals, a house Ben wishes to write about following a childhood experience, which, when described is in away quite chilling. Predictably, the Marsten house has its wonderful grim history linked to the murder of children. Having been abandoned for years, around the time of Ben’s return, the house is inhabited again, except the new tenant is far worse than the architect, Hubie Marsten.

The majority of characters in the novel are what made it for me. I loved Ben, possibly because as a hopeful writer I felt drawn to his character. I also loved the young Mark Petrie, who, despite being a different age to the book character, Dan Byrd did a stunning performance as in the 2004 television adaptation. Hell, I even loved Kurt Barlow, possibly my favourite vampire, or, if being honest the only vampire I’ve ever really enjoyed reading about. Once again returning to the Dark Tower, I already knew I loved Father Callahan, Salem’s Lot merely made me like the character more as I got the full explanation as to what was going on with him.

Issues with the novel? My only issues came in the form of one particular character, Susan Norton. The young college graduate and new love interest of Ben. She struck me as bland, boring and just irritating. And the sex scene, which was in no way graphic, just poorly written and cheesy with the description of Susan’s cotton skirt rustling and driving Ben mad. The kind of thing that I've seen better descriptions of in stories online.

However, those two criticisms out of the way, I loved this book, however, I know for a fact my view of this novel was biased as soon as I bought it one cold day when me and my friend decided to venture outside during our college lunch hour. I knew I’d like Callahan, and, having read one of the scenes through the Dark Tower novel I knew the novel as a whole was going to take a course I would enjoy. Though, I would defiantly recommend this book, especially to people who like what I refer to as real vampires who can’t go out in the day, have evil intentions and need to be invited into buildings. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly entertained me.