Under the Dome by Stephen King

When I was just about to enter Junior High school my family moved to the New England area.  At a very you and impressionable age this move ingrained a couple of things into my psyche.  1st was my undying love of the Boston Red Sox (damn you Bill Buckner!  I cried for days) and 2nd was my love of anything written by Stephen King.  Though I’ll admit the last few years I haven’t been as interested in what he has been churning out.  I never made it thru Insomnia (ironically I kept falling asleep) and skipped most of his other books over the last few years.  But then I heard some good buzz about Under the Dome.  I picked the book up and was immediately hooked.

Basically this is a very simple story.  There is a small New England town called Chester’s Mill.  One day they are suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious dome that seals them off from the rest of the world.  After cleaning up the mess and burying the victims of the 1st day under the dome the survivors go about trying to live a somewhat normal life as those outside the dome try and figure a way to free them.  But trouble is brewing in the form of the town’s 2nd selectman “Big Jim” Rennie, who lets the crisis and the power that it gives him go to his head.  His son, who has his own issues, further complicates this.  There are a lot of secrets in the town of Chester’s Mill and before the dome goes away, if ever, they will all be exposed.  Honestly I’m not even scratching the surface of the book, which is over a 1,000 pages long and is another King epic.

And this book really is another of King’s epic novels.  Not since the Stand have I read a book that had this many characters, but was still so engaging and easy to follow.  This is quite a trick and I think that is the secret to making a novel like this work.  The dome is an interesting plot device and sets up what happens.  But unlike many other novels that focus on technology or science fiction, Under the Dome is about the characters.  The more that I thought about this review and the other books that I’ve read from him it became more and more clear to me.  King is very adept at creating characters that you both want to root for and others that you can’t wait until they get what is coming to them.  It is this connection to the characters and their eventual fates, both good and bad that makes his novels real page-turners.  And in spite the length of a book like Under the Dome and the amount of things happening in it, this is an exciting and fun read.  You really care, or at least I did, what happens to these characters.  Heck when I finally got to the last page I was a bit sad knowing that there story was finished and I had to say goodbye to them.

I feel like I should have more to say or talk more about the plot.  A short review of a book that is such an epic achievement and of such length deserves more then 6 or 7 hundred words.  But then again why waste your time reading my review when you have such a great book to read?

So in conclusion I would highly recommend that everyone head out and pick up a copy of Under the Dome.  It is a masterpiece from one the greatest writers, genre or not, of the last 30 years.  With this book Stephen King has almost topped himself (The Stand is still my favorite…) and it is a must read.  Just do yourself a favor and savor it a bit. 

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer