‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (Epub)

Description

Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work—in fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town.

With this, his second novel, Stephen King established himself as an indisputable master of American horror, able to transform the old conceits of the genre into something fresh and all the more frightening for taking place in a familiar, idyllic locale.

User’s Reviews

“A master storyteller.” —The Los Angeles Times“Stephen King has built a literary genre of putting ordinary people in the most terrifying situations. . . . He’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you’ll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” —The Boston Globe “Peerless imagination.” —The Observer (London)“An unabashed chiller.” —Austin American Statesman“[The] most wonderfully gruesome man on the planet.” —USA Today“[King is] the guy who probably knows more about scary goings-on in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe.” —Entertainment Weekly“Spine-tingling fiction at its best.” —Grand Rapids Press“A super exorcism. . . . Tremendous.” —Kirkus

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I read this book as a kid and it scared the beejesus out of me. I read it again recently as an adult and it was a different experience alltogether. If you arent a King fan or are, if horror is your thing or its not, here are 3 reasons why this is still a great bookk:1. Its not what you might expect. Yes, its about vampires visiting a small town and good vs Evil (capital “E”), but Salems lot is a soap opra, with vivid characters only King can create and vignettes of life in a small town that will make you feel nostalgic and disgusted at the same time. They beat their children, cheat on their husbands, drink and bully. Yet its hard to pin them on a good vs bad board, there are shades of grey with everyone you meet. This town is Anytown USA, more a charcter than a setting and you realize the evil man can do is more destructive to society than a thousand year old vampire.2. It is King at his finest – the writing, the transitions and use of the third person narrative makes the story come alive – its a slow build I admit but by the time the bodies start dropping King makes you care in a way most horror novels dont bother to. You feel for the Glicks, you root for the alcoholic priest trying to reclaim enough faith to battle the dark one and you are happy for Dud in his new life. King will do this again in the Stand and in It, but once you read SL you realize hes sampling from his earlier works and no other book will make you laugh cry and turn on the lights like this one will. The genuis of starting the book with the tall man and boy in Mexico is you kind of know whats going to happen (much like a Columbo episode where you see the murder up front), but it raises so many questions you simply have to hang on.3. Its the best kind of horror story – it follows the rules and tells classic tale. Straker and Barlow may be the villans but they arent blood thirsty monsters either – they are true to their nature. A vampire kils and a watchdog protects. In one seen where Straker does something awful, King takes the time to tell us about the look on his face which enlightens the reader about his motivation. They follow all the vampire rules – sunlight and crosses and of course the need for an invitation (in fact they were invited to the town by Marsten). They arent invincible foes but they are formidable ones. And its the townspeople that drive the action and turn SL into an apocalypse.This is a rich story full of great themes about society, the power of faith, men vs boys (my favorite chapter is the inner monologue Mark Petrie has after a close call where he muses about how adult fears are nothing compared to what a child dels with under the bed at night) and even love and salvation. Read it and decide for yourself if this is a horror novel or a novel about the horrorz of man.

⭐ Having read the original the day it came out (I literally could not put it down), I was just a bit disappointed when my Kindle version arrived with all kinds of amendments, editor’s notes, and addendum. I was looking forward to reliving a horrific experience (in the best possible way), but instead had to wade through changes, explanations and a lot of other things that made it less of an experience for me.Stephen King is not the only guilty party when it comes to altering released versions of his art – many recording artists from the Sixties apparently arrived at a point in their career where they felt they could improve upon the originally-released version of their work. What they fail to consider in doing so is the fact that those original releases have become a part of their audience’s subconscious to which changes are most unwelcome, especially if the ‘new and improved’ version becomes all that is available.One of my favorite books of all time is Stephen King’s The Stand, and while I would have found his unedited version interesting from a writer’s perspective, I vastly prefer the original edited version as a reader. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available any longer. Same goes for Salem’s Lot in Kindle form. If it’s the original horror you seek, hit the used book stores, and I wish you luck!

⭐ The Best.

⭐ Overall, of course an enjoyable page turning read, but I thought some of the book’s revelations didn’t really measure up to the tremendous suspense that was created throughout the first half of the book, and I found the major character’s sudden and successful embrace of Catholicism and horror movie clichés as a solution to the town’s “problems” at times fairly ridiculous. While a little shorter than many of King’s books, at just 653 pages, I still think ‘Salem’s Lot has the typical Stephen King problem of being slightly too long, with a few too many characters introduced to keep track of. My biggest issue though is that the first half of the novel is much more compelling than the second half, which drags on for quite a while after the book has drifted into fairly obvious how things are going to play out territory.

⭐ I enjoyed Salem’s Lot. Prior to this novel, I read Carrie which was my first by King. I liked this story, a writer staying in a boarding house to write a book about a haunted house from his childhood that continued to bother him even in his adulthood. A group coming together to kill these creatures infesting the town. The witty English teacher/ Dr. Van Helsing character. Parts if it made me laugh in bed while reading, others creeped me out… especially the image of these child vampires overcoming the town’s crotchety bus driver after baiting him onto the bus in the middle of the night. It definitely kept me engaged and I’m looking forward to reading a few more of King’s books. In the afterword, King refers to Salem’s Lot as an American vampire tale… it was then I remembered thumbing through the pages one of my brother’s comic books with the same title and how King contributed to the writing of it. Good read.

⭐ I originally got this book when it first came out in 1975. And, for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get into it. So, after all these years, I thought I’d try again.It’s still not my favorite Stephen King book – and I’ve read them all. But it is much better than I remembered. It’s a hefty tome like most of King’s offerings and I did feel that it was repetitive and too wordy in spots.But as far as vampire books go, it’s truly top of the line. You aren’t going to find blood, guts and gore like modern day vampire tales. There are a few stomach-roiling moments but King mainly depends on his superior storytelling abilities to let the reader imagine the terrifying happenings in ‘salem’s Lot.The book is suspenseful and scary yet filled with ordinary people trying to overcome extraordinary circumstances.I enjoyed most of the characters, especially Ben and Mark. They were vividly drawn and I felt I would know them if I ever met them – and even call them friends.A couple of negatives based on this illustrated edition:There were very few pictures in the book, especially for a book of this length. And the pictures are very small in the Kindle edition.There was a formatting issue about halfway through the book that garbled up about 50 pages of the book. It was barely readable – and annoying.I did enjoy the two short stories that were part of this edition – ONE FOR THE ROAD and JERUSALEM’S LOT. And I especially enjoyed the deleted scenes at the end of the book.So, all in all, I’m glad I re-read this book. Will I read it again someday in the future like I do many of Stephen King’s books? Probably not.

⭐ I’ll start with a confession: I read this because of the Dark Tower series. That said, my first King book I read was The Stand, and I was hooked. I starting the Dark Tower series shortly thereafter, and found myself wanting to know more about Father Callahan, so I jumped to Salem’s Lot.Slight spoiler alert. If you’re looking for a story about Father Callahan, or are trying to gleam some more information on the Dark Tower, I think you’ll be disappointed. The Father is definitely in the book, and there’s more detail surrounding his ordeal in The ‘Lot, but the Dark Tower does a pretty good job of explaining it. So if you’re coming at it from that angle, you might be disappointed. All of that said, this is a great book. It was on my short list to read anyway, I just jumped on it sooner rather than later.

⭐ Who better to turn to during the spookiest month of the year than the master of Horror himself? It has been some time since I picked up a Stephen King book, and I decided it was time to go way back and tackle one of his earliest that has been on my list the longest, ‘Salem’s Lot. And let’s be honest, absolutely devouring Mike Flanagan’s recently released Midnight Mass had me ravenous for another good vampire story.I always enjoy when a story makes it clear up front that it will be more about the journey than the destination. The prologue of this book makes it quite clear where we’ll end up, and so I was prepped from the beginning to just take the story as it was given to me and enjoy the ride, and the excellent characterization which King achieves. It’s a very slow burn, but there’s also somehow this sense of everything happening very quickly, when the dark realization creeps over you of just how easily a vampire and his brood can turn a town. And no one’s safe, is the thing. It is both shocking and obvious how quickly things go from alright to beyond repair in a situation like this.And anyway there’s just something about Stephen King. It is this something that has led to his astronomical success, and has kept people coming back to him year after year after year. He’s just a natural storyteller, and his stories feel like an embrace. Even this early work has the occasional paragraph of such piercing linguistic beauty that you can’t help but raise an eyebrow.So maybe you’ve missed the season, but the next time you feel like taking a visit to small-town Maine—the next time you feel like it’s been a little too long since you’ve been afraid of the things that haunt the night—you know where to go.‘Her mind was clear, still unimpressed with this talk of bloodsuckers and the undead. It was from her spinal cord, a much older network of nerves and ganglia, that the black dread emanated in waves.’

⭐ Loved it.

⭐ As described

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