Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King’s second novel ‘Salem’s Lot easily stands up with the best of his fiction. While it is slightly dated due to its publication in 1975, the king of horror definitely knew his craft even back in the early days of his career.

The novel is set in the fictional town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine (hence the book’s title) and probes at the horrors of one of the most common monsters of the genre: vampires. This originally made me question the novel’s originality, but King did an excellent job of displaying the creatures’ terror that was later dulled down by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer.

The Lot, as the town is called by its inhabitants, is a backwoods small town until the arrival of a centuries-old vampire, Barlow, and his human servant, Straker. Together they work to feed and transform the people of the Lot into blood-lusting creatures, adding more and more servants to Barlow’s army. The only people in the town to discover and believe the unlikely plague is a group consisting of a has-been author, an aged English teacher, a small boy and a young doctor. Over the course of the novel, they work against Barlow’s seemingly unstoppable cunning and growing regime in an attempt to save the depleting Lot.

One of the things King has excelled at throughout his career is bringing dialogue to life, adding realism that often only seems available in real-life conversations. Along with this, King brought forth not only incredible fight scenes against the vampires but also the emotions people would experience living through such a traumatic experience. ‘Salem’s Lot displayed his understanding of human psychology and showed how his observances of human behaviors are unparalleled by most other authors.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was its prologue, which was slightly confusing until I reached the epilogue and remained unanswered by the rest of the novel. But besides that, it is easy to see why King’s career was able to launch forward to its success today when his early works included publications like ­‘Salem’s Lot.