A review by bbrassfield
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

5.0

Excellent second novel from Stephen King. I have not read any early King since I was very young and these early novels were relatively new, but last year I re-read IT and enjoyed it more than I remembered the first time. In the case of Salem's Lot, reading this early work is like being introduced to a different writer. The writing is far more economical and there is a lyrical quality to some of the more thoughtful passages that are just absent from some of his later work. I am talking about really poignant passages about the mutability of time and the seasons, and by comparison, our relatively short lives. Perhaps this is due to Salem's Lot being a novel about vampires, a modern day Dracula come to a small Maine town a hundred years or so after Bram Stoker, but I rather think the more lyrical prose is just the work of a younger writer still feeling his way through his then-new fictional dreamscape. Either way, Salem's Lot is a joy to read for fans of the genre and quite interesting to revisit given King's long and prodigious career.