Review - Salem's Lot

I expected to be really creeped out by this one, but I wasn't so much. Maybe because I've been reading a lot of vampire fiction lately, maybe because I read it within twenty-four hours with my girlfriend in the same room. Who knows? I definitely liked it, though. The vampires are the right kind of vampires -- the scary, disgusting, strangely alluring kind. The kind that make your skin crawl. They were definitely creepy -- especially in the very last part where Ben has already staked Barlow and yet his teeth are left behind, trying to bite... euuughh. Creepy.

It's like The Stand (the only other Stephen King book I've read) in that there's a lot of build up. That got a bit wearing, but it also helped build tension and made the impact bigger, and I never quite got sick of it. I didn't get as absorbed in the characters as I did in The Stand, but I was still upset when Jimmy got bitten, and when Matt and Jimmy died. I didn't care so much about Susan -- I'm didn't really feel the relationship between her and Ben, and it felt like she was just there for more impact on Ben.

I liked the very last part quite a lot. It was good to see that the fire that'd been referenced so many times was actually there for a reason.