Dec 7, 2014

Stephen King: 'Salem's Lot



Imagine the story of Dracula being retold on the US ground. That’s basically it. Except the vampire here starts building his army of followers by simple maths. He creates one, the one he created creates another one and so on till you have a town full of bloodthirsty citizens and a couple of survivors.
But this is a Stephen King story and it means it’s full of thrilling moments, suspension and passages which make your blood run cold. It seems as thick and dense as the original King derived from and even though you can’t help but always try to compare it with the original, you can find its own pace and storyline which makes it a lot different.
I could tell you that there are no diary entries or letters here, that there are still men trying to protect their women, that the villain still goes after the hero’s beloved but this time he is not focused solely on her. I could point out all the themes which stayed in vampire literature and the new ones which appeared here for the first time. I could also tell you that there are more characters to spice things up and set the pace here but then you would know too much and wouldn’t perhaps feel like reading it for yourself. And that would be a shame.

GENRE: horror
FANGS OUT: modern approach to the old theme
FANGS RETRACTING: Dracula’s influence perhaps too much for someone
TOTAL SCORE:

No comments:

Post a Comment