Customer Reviews

Under the Dome: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read my first Stephen King book when I was 13 years old and have been hooked every since. As is expected with an author that has something like 50+ published novels of pretty substantial size, I have been disappointed a number of times. Under the Dome, however, is not one of those times. After getting my hands on an advanced reading copy through my work (a bookstore) I started this behemoth and was hooked from page 3. King starts this story with a bang and burns rubber throughout the entire novel, never letting up the hyper-speed pace. With a book this size, I was expecting a few parts to sag, to be boring, but nothing like that ever happened while reading this book: I was completely addicted.

The story is simple: a big ol' dome comes down and cuts off this one small town, Chester's Mill, from the rest of the world. No one can get in or out. What the novel focuses on is how that changes the society inside the dome, how people react to their new enclosed space. And, since this is a King book, you can expect that they don't act well. This town has a lot of bad apples and skeletons in the closet, and they all come out to play when the dome comes down.

There are a few times in this story where I had to suspend my disbelief a little bit farther than I was willing. Mainly, in that things turned south so fast. Perhaps it was just the fact that the book was hundreds of pages, but I couldn't help being jarred whenever I learned that only a day or two had passed in the world of the book, when it felt like it was more time to me. Perhaps this was a conscious decision to keep the pacing fast. Some of the characters can come across as cartoonish, especially the main villain. Most of the characters are well-written and interesting, with faults that make them more believable. But this book is a good one. Not as good as the book it's inevitably going to be compared to (The Stand), but good. King dives into some complex questions about authority, fear, and propaganda, drawing some comparisons between the tactics of George Bush and Dick Cheney and our Dome-villian government figures. There is also a pretty heavy dose of environmental catastrophe interlaced throughout that parallels well with our current global warming issue.

My advice would be not to start this book unless you're ready to turn off the phone, lock the door, and finish the whole thing in one go.

I have never read a Stephen King book before, but I have seen many movies based off his books. As expected his books are not much different than the movies. Stephen King seems to have the curse of writing great beginnings and then not knowing how to end them. Besides the lame ending, one thing that really bother me about this book was the gross technical inaccuracy. Many people do things like confuse GSM with Wifi, so I can't hold that against him. I can also forgive him for not thinking about using induction to transmit power to the people in the dome, and to create breathable air at the end, since Stephen King is not a scientist. However, Stephen King seems to lack even a grade school understanding of combustion engines. All combustion engines require three things: fuel, spark, and air. How in the world people could be driving cars when there is not enough oxygen to breath, is beyond me. I could ignore this flaw, and simply pretend like all the vehicles are battery powered. However, the generators would have the same requirement. The story makes too big a deal out of the propane for me to suspend my disbelief, or do something like pretend the generators are backup batteries or such...

My recommendation is read the book until the climax, and then make-up your own ending.

Ok, I'm one of those "rabid King fans" mentioned in a previous review. I had a hell of a time NOT buying this when I saw it in the bookstore, sure that it would be a Christmas gift, as King's newest always is, from my brother. And then I burned through the first 800 pages, gorging on Christmas chocolates AND Stephen King. Let's face it - he knows what he's doing. There were no slow spots (in a 1000-plus page book? Yes, really!) But it was all...familiar. The characters, the bad guys, the kids. Anyone remember the author in Bag of Bones? How he wrote more than a book a year sometimes, saved up the extras and then doled them out when he ran dry? Hm.

And while I saw (and loved) the environmental and political parallels (and for that reason sped through the book to find out if they can be saved - what's the magic potion? What do we need to do, to save ourselves from our larger, but sadly similar dome?) I felt a bit like Annie Wilkes in Misery: cheated. The ending was well, kinda phoned in. Sorry Steve - you're still the King in my book-reader's heart - the decent thing for me to do now is to write the rave reviews for all your books that are fantastic. And there are many, many of those. I'm going to go read one now.

Chester's Mill, a small Maine town that has somehow escaped the attention of vampires, ghosts, creatures from alternate realities, and hostile alien plagues, finally feels the full frontal effects of Stephen King's deadly imagination. One fall day, without warning, a transparent "dome" descends into place around the borders of the town, cutting it off from physical contact with the outside world. The rest of the story plays out with minimal attention to the Dome's origins, although speculation abounds. Readers focus on how this intervention affects the people trapped inside.

Some effects are immediate. A hapless woodchuck ambling down a country road is abruptly sliced in half by the descending Dome. Several vehicles encounter the barrier and fail explosively to penetrate it. Pedestrians fair better, suffering a few bumped heads and bloody noses. Such collisions decrease as those inside and outside of the Dome adjust to its presence. Although light, radio and cell phone transmissions pass freely through the Dome, physical penetration is more problematic. Water and air can seep through slowly, but nothing larger can pass. There is no way over or under it. The best minds in the Federal government set to work on a plan to rescue the inhabitants. This leaves plenty of time for character development.

Comparisons to Lord of the Flies are appropriate. Even more so than in Bag of Bones, the real monsters are all too human. Some follow a predictable path. Small-town power broker "Big Jim" Rennie becomes more ruthless and manipulative. His son Junior and a few others also degenerate into something less than their former selves. Most of the townspeople seem driven along by these events, neither understanding nor attempting to resist them. The few who do resist include drifter and former Army Captain Dale Barber and local newspaper publisher Julia Shumway. Each group is aided and frustrated by others in the town, sometimes in surprising ways. The population of the Dome gradually decreases.

This is an enjoyable story, lent an air of realism by the well-researched depiction of the worsening environmental conditions inside the Dome. The characters are convincing--and some are larger than life. Fans of "The Trashcan Man" in The Stand will love "The Chef," a meth-cooking, gun-toting, scripture-quoting outcast with his own agenda. He, too, finds help from unexpected sources.

This book is worth reading on its own merits. Seasoned King fans will find references to his other fiction. That's part of the game, too. Play it out.

The day has finally arrived when even the most rabid fan (myself included) must admit that Steve appears to have said all he has to say.

I was profoundly disappointed by this much-anticipated epic when it proved to be nothing more than a tired retread of elements & characters from "Needful Things", "Desperation" and "The Stand". There's fundamentally nothing worth reading in "Under the Dome" that hasn't already been thoroughly covered in those three previous books. (Having re-read "Needful Things" just a few months prior, the rehash was all the more painful to witness.)

Let's not cling to the man's genius and gold-stamp everything he does. It's very clear to me why this project took so long to see light, and really shouldn't have. Just because you "can", Steve, doesn't mean you "should".

Thumbs down.

Get this book. it's another great yarn by a master.

perfectly paced. the characters will persist in your memory. worth every cent.

At the end of the book, Stephen King gave the length of time for the writing of "Under the Dome"; over a thousand pages, it felt like it took me that long to read it! So was it worth it? I gave it four stars and that was mostly for the last part of the book. Earlier, I thought there was footage/chapters that could have been omitted - I didn't want to experience the thought process of a dog. Also, King's prose delivery was way different and, unfortunately, way weaker than usual. But, goshdarnit, still four stars!

P.S. I'm going to watch the television adaptation in June. Are you?

Wasnt expecting the book to be so long, I havent finished it all but love where the story is going.

Bought this for my Kindle. Fast download. I enjoyed the story as I usually enjoy Stephen King's work. I would recommend this to anyone who reads Stephen King or who just wants to try his work out for the first time.

I tried, I really did. I am a huge fan of Stephen King and when this novel came out I had to have it. I did my best to get into the story, but it wouldn't come. I was bored and had to force myself to keep reading. This is a DNF for me for now. I may come back to it later to give it a go again.