Under the Dome by Stephen King
This is a beast of a book. At nearly 1100 pages it was difficult to hold, much less read comfortably.
Under the Dome is the story of a small town in Maine that gets cut off from the rest of the world beneath a large “glass” dome. The town has only about 2000 people and you get to know, quite intimately, about 50 of them over the course of all those pages.
What I loved most about the book was despite its size (and the intimidation factor coming from that) Stephen King’s use of short “portions” to make the book seem more friendly. Each section has its own set of 5-9ish chapters and attack different parts of the story.
Every character was distinct and the dialog moved so quickly and was so intense that before I knew it 30-40 pages had flown by. Although the book went a little too “sci-fi” for my taste, it was done well enough that I didn’t mind it all that much. And I admit, during certain scenes, I shed a few tears.
Now, the things I didn’t like. I didn’t like the stereotyping of “all conservatives are power-hungry, Hitler-like ignorant folks” and that in order to be a well-educated, thoughtful person it means you loved CNN and the other major networks and thought Fox news was a bunch of nutjobs. There were jabs all the way through against conservatives and really didn’t do much for the story aside from portray the authors own prejudices. I rolled my eyes quite a few times and moved on – but it bothered me enough to convince me that this is probably the last King novel I’ll read. I read for enjoyment and not to be preached by the author, whether its for politics, religion or anything else.
In addition, the book was very, very gory. It didn’t bug me that much (although a few of the images were.. wow) and I knew picking up the book that the writing would be brutal. While I loved the empowerment he gave many of the women in the book, he also went that extra bit and portrayed some pretty despicable acts that I could have done without.
So, interesting read – it flew by despite its size but it’s not a reread for me and I don’t think it’s a book I will recommend lightly.
