Under the Dome
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Horror
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Horror
Book Type: Paperback
It's been a long time since I've read any Stephen King. I loved his novels as a teenager, but got distracted by other authors as I got older and haven't been back to him for probably twenty years. But "Under the Dome" showed up on some "best of 2010" lists, and so I picked it up to give this new one a shot.
It's pretty damn wonderful. The action in just the first few pages *really* drew me in, as the titular dome comes down and slices a hedgehog in half while a small plane above slams into an invisible force field. And it didn't let up. There are characters to hate; there are characters to love, and their interactions are what makes the book really shine.
The story, in essence, is how bad things can go when a small Maine town is cut off, in a physical sense, from the rest of the world. It's got power-hungry town government, crazy people with guns, and an environment where things go from fresh air to stale air (literally and figuratively) in a week's time. It's a bit like "Lord of the Flies" that way, in truth, only we have adults here as well.
The only real problem I have with the novel is the rationale behind the dome generation itself. The book kind of has to end with the answer to the question of "who's behind the dome?" and the answer to that question is very unsatisfying to me. And the thing is, the answer to that question is really, truly, not significant to the story at all. There's a lot of novel with lots of great stuff, and to end with an unimportant and poorly designed "big reveal" is kind of a let down.
4 of 5 stars.
It's pretty damn wonderful. The action in just the first few pages *really* drew me in, as the titular dome comes down and slices a hedgehog in half while a small plane above slams into an invisible force field. And it didn't let up. There are characters to hate; there are characters to love, and their interactions are what makes the book really shine.
The story, in essence, is how bad things can go when a small Maine town is cut off, in a physical sense, from the rest of the world. It's got power-hungry town government, crazy people with guns, and an environment where things go from fresh air to stale air (literally and figuratively) in a week's time. It's a bit like "Lord of the Flies" that way, in truth, only we have adults here as well.
The only real problem I have with the novel is the rationale behind the dome generation itself. The book kind of has to end with the answer to the question of "who's behind the dome?" and the answer to that question is very unsatisfying to me. And the thing is, the answer to that question is really, truly, not significant to the story at all. There's a lot of novel with lots of great stuff, and to end with an unimportant and poorly designed "big reveal" is kind of a let down.
4 of 5 stars.
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