Salem's Lot

Coming in at a close third, well-known thriller and fantasy author, Stephen King, shocked readers with another enthralling fantasy novel, inspired by Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. In his 1975 novel, Salem’s Lot, King takes an entirely different approach to the vampire sub-genre. After contemplating how a vampire would cope in a modern America, King decided to craft a clever story based on this idea. Bordering on a vampire-zombie apocalypse setting, King’s novels takes the vampire fantasy sub-genre to a new level of terror. King is one of the most unrecognized writers on the planet. Oh, I know he’s made millions from both his books and movie deals, but the literary world has continually given him the snub.King single handedly reboots the entire vampire myth to a modern-day setting with his book. Without a doubt, Salem's Lot is one of King’s best books (and that’s saying a lot since King has quite a fair share of them) and arguably a vampiric masterpiece. Like with any classic “King” novel, there is a small community of people who are on many levels disconnected from each other. It is this very disconnection that shelters a lurking evil.With loving detail, King builds up the community. You get the day to day sense of the community – both the goodness present and the inherent flaws. But it's a town with dangerous secrets, with hidden closets and locked doors, a town where evil things can lurk beneath the light of the ordinary. It's a place where the ordinary can become extraordinary. A place where the uncanny can happen.With Salem’s Lot, King builds a house of dominos and in one unrelenting chapter, tears it all down. So sit down and enjoy the feast. It’s going to get bloody. This is one freaky novel folks, doused with all the King goodness you could ask for. Read it and be scaredDespite this novel only being King’s second book, the engaging pace of the plot will leave you waiting with bated breath to find out what happens next. King has been commended for his uncanny ability to respect the traditional vampire mythology while incorporating a completely unique twist in the story. King’s ability to create a realistic and modern (at least at that time) horror novel was praised for its realism with many reviewers commenting that the story could be set in any small, American town. Replete with intense action scenes, readers were left stunned by King’s artful descriptions of violence in an atmosphere dripping with menace and mystery. Characterized as being one of the most terrifying vampire novels of all time, expect to be left wide awake after this blood curdling read.

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