This series is adapted from Stephen King's short story "Jerusalem's Lot," the first short story of the first collection of short stories by Stephen King, Night Shift (1975-1978). That was also the first short story or novel or story about vampires. It is the root story for the later novel Jerusalem's Lot (first published as an illustrated book in 1975) and as a novel under the title Salem's Lot in 1975 too.
The series is very well done, and the story is full of suspense, though we more or less know what is going to happen. There might be differences with the short story I have retrieved from my library but that is not important here.
First vampires are invisible in a mirror. They are immortal because they are undead, which means they cannot die, except in very precise and special ways like being beheaded, having their heart destroyed with a stake, or being burned to death. The vampires here are clearly in agreement with the standard version of them. They feed on human blood. They can turn any human into vampires by making them drink their blood and then killing them. They will be reborn as immortal undead. They hate sunlight and are nocturnal animals or humanoid individuals. They love sticking together and they need a number of dedicated servants to feed them and to look after them in the daytime.
The second element is that the vampire nest is created by one vampire arriving in a human community, and settling next to it, and feeding on this community. This outside origin of a vampire nest is typical of modern vampire stories, though there is some link with the first matrix of this story in modern times, Dracula by Bram Stoker. In America, in the middle of the 19th century, it was rather easy to move around and to be a vampire because of the rather disorganization in the country and even on the continent.
The third element in this story is the house of the Boone family. The main actor is a third-generation American Boone. He is a whaler, hence a ship captain, and has had the luck to escape his own father who wanted to kill him to prevent his becoming a vampire. He was saved by his mother who shot the father when he was in the process of killing and burying the son. The grandfather, the first vampire in the family, and an uncle, a brother of Charles Boone's own father, the second vampire in the family, fake their death and burial so that they could will the estate and the wood cutting business to their distant nephew who is lured into coming back and only finds out when he arrives with his three children after the death of his wife, buried at sea, what it is all about.
He discovers that the house is haunted, in fact, is built in such a way that there are passages between the walls and rooms with an outside rather distant entry and some entries in some rooms of the house so that the vampiric Boones can walk around and they probably hope they will be able to feed on their relatives or turn them into vampires to be able to get the "book" and defeat the master vampire.
During that time, the "father" of the nest has established his quarters in an abandoned mining estate that belonged to the Boones, and he has turned the chapel there into an entirely lightless building, hence a decent home for them all in the daytime while their ghouls are protecting the chapel and the settlement. The settlement is called Jerusalem's Lot.
Then the series is very, Kingian in many ways because it centers the story on systematic opposition and hostility in the human community that has developed around the Boone sawmill and who hate the Boones because of what they call the Boone sickness or plague, in fact, the dizziness and even death that comes from being used at night as feeding cattle by the vampires. The point is that in the community some perfectly know it all, but they are hiding the problem. Many other social evils and much hypocrisy are revealed with a preacher married to the daughter of the previous preacher, still alive, and having thus inherited of the congregation, is having an affair with one of the women who are feeding the vampires with the promise of being made eternal someday. She gets a child, at first attributed to the young preacher, and later to the vampire-master of the mining settlement, which explains why the baby does not have eyes since he is a child of the dark, of the night. This is a metaphor of course.
The most poignant part is that Captain Boone's second daughter, Loa, has a handicap due to scorbutic deformation and has to wear braces on her right leg. She hates it and accuses her father. That leads her to yield to the vampire promise to be safe and healthy if she accepted to become a vampire, which she does, not seeing that it is the way used by this master vampire to blackmail Captain Boone into finding a certain magical book that could bring the permanent night to the place and enable the vampires to become the master of the place and the humans their cattle. And it works. Then the story is simple.
The general fight between the humans from the human city against the ghouls and the vampires, after a successful siege of the Boone house that enables the master-vampire to finally recuperate the book that should enable him to bring the oldest god imaginable, the Worm. Then the vampires and their ghouls go away and start the procedure. The human attack on the vampire settlement is difficult and eternal night is setting in as a solar eclipse by the moon. When that happens, the various vampires give their blood to the ghouls, then strangle them so that they can be reborn as vampires.
To find the ending, you'll have to watch the series.
The last remark is very sad. Only the father can protect his children and when it is all finished, he is supposed to go away with the book and become the guardian of it. Note he has been made a vampire by Loa, and with his own consent. This father goes back to the sea on a small boat. But he leaves Loa behind to be taken care of by her sister and brother. That is definitely unfinished, and that is also typically Kingian. Since this series is so far the first season of the series, there will be a second season one day and we are waiting for it.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.
The series is very well done, and the story is full of suspense, though we more or less know what is going to happen. There might be differences with the short story I have retrieved from my library but that is not important here.
First vampires are invisible in a mirror. They are immortal because they are undead, which means they cannot die, except in very precise and special ways like being beheaded, having their heart destroyed with a stake, or being burned to death. The vampires here are clearly in agreement with the standard version of them. They feed on human blood. They can turn any human into vampires by making them drink their blood and then killing them. They will be reborn as immortal undead. They hate sunlight and are nocturnal animals or humanoid individuals. They love sticking together and they need a number of dedicated servants to feed them and to look after them in the daytime.
The second element is that the vampire nest is created by one vampire arriving in a human community, and settling next to it, and feeding on this community. This outside origin of a vampire nest is typical of modern vampire stories, though there is some link with the first matrix of this story in modern times, Dracula by Bram Stoker. In America, in the middle of the 19th century, it was rather easy to move around and to be a vampire because of the rather disorganization in the country and even on the continent.
The third element in this story is the house of the Boone family. The main actor is a third-generation American Boone. He is a whaler, hence a ship captain, and has had the luck to escape his own father who wanted to kill him to prevent his becoming a vampire. He was saved by his mother who shot the father when he was in the process of killing and burying the son. The grandfather, the first vampire in the family, and an uncle, a brother of Charles Boone's own father, the second vampire in the family, fake their death and burial so that they could will the estate and the wood cutting business to their distant nephew who is lured into coming back and only finds out when he arrives with his three children after the death of his wife, buried at sea, what it is all about.
He discovers that the house is haunted, in fact, is built in such a way that there are passages between the walls and rooms with an outside rather distant entry and some entries in some rooms of the house so that the vampiric Boones can walk around and they probably hope they will be able to feed on their relatives or turn them into vampires to be able to get the "book" and defeat the master vampire.
During that time, the "father" of the nest has established his quarters in an abandoned mining estate that belonged to the Boones, and he has turned the chapel there into an entirely lightless building, hence a decent home for them all in the daytime while their ghouls are protecting the chapel and the settlement. The settlement is called Jerusalem's Lot.
Then the series is very, Kingian in many ways because it centers the story on systematic opposition and hostility in the human community that has developed around the Boone sawmill and who hate the Boones because of what they call the Boone sickness or plague, in fact, the dizziness and even death that comes from being used at night as feeding cattle by the vampires. The point is that in the community some perfectly know it all, but they are hiding the problem. Many other social evils and much hypocrisy are revealed with a preacher married to the daughter of the previous preacher, still alive, and having thus inherited of the congregation, is having an affair with one of the women who are feeding the vampires with the promise of being made eternal someday. She gets a child, at first attributed to the young preacher, and later to the vampire-master of the mining settlement, which explains why the baby does not have eyes since he is a child of the dark, of the night. This is a metaphor of course.
The most poignant part is that Captain Boone's second daughter, Loa, has a handicap due to scorbutic deformation and has to wear braces on her right leg. She hates it and accuses her father. That leads her to yield to the vampire promise to be safe and healthy if she accepted to become a vampire, which she does, not seeing that it is the way used by this master vampire to blackmail Captain Boone into finding a certain magical book that could bring the permanent night to the place and enable the vampires to become the master of the place and the humans their cattle. And it works. Then the story is simple.
The general fight between the humans from the human city against the ghouls and the vampires, after a successful siege of the Boone house that enables the master-vampire to finally recuperate the book that should enable him to bring the oldest god imaginable, the Worm. Then the vampires and their ghouls go away and start the procedure. The human attack on the vampire settlement is difficult and eternal night is setting in as a solar eclipse by the moon. When that happens, the various vampires give their blood to the ghouls, then strangle them so that they can be reborn as vampires.
To find the ending, you'll have to watch the series.
The last remark is very sad. Only the father can protect his children and when it is all finished, he is supposed to go away with the book and become the guardian of it. Note he has been made a vampire by Loa, and with his own consent. This father goes back to the sea on a small boat. But he leaves Loa behind to be taken care of by her sister and brother. That is definitely unfinished, and that is also typically Kingian. Since this series is so far the first season of the series, there will be a second season one day and we are waiting for it.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.