Under the Dome

As I flip past page 1,088 (actually only 805 on my Sony Reader), I can’t help but be reminded of a classic Peggy Lee song: Is that All There Is?

          I must preface my review by noting that I’m one of those untold thousands who read The Stand in its original (lengthy) version then devoured the “expanded” edition when it was released. The Shining was the first book I ever read that refused to be set down. I tried, but couldn’t close it until the final page. The tension and anxiety started on page one and never relented. That was the book that hooked me on Steven King’s writing. It is also the thing that is, for the most part, missing from Under the Dome.

          The story is liberally sprinkled with all the elements needed to create tension and suspense: sudden death, large scale drug dealings, murder, rape, riots, fascist-like power grabbing, paranormal events, et al. With all of these elements to work with, one would expect a complex, interwoven story with many levels. What it has, instead, is an endless list of characters none of which stand out. In the end, it all comes across in a rather pedestrian, even checklist, manner. One, brutal murder is completed in a sentence, maybe two.

          Only after about 800 pages, beginning when dissidents  secretly meet, does some of Kings true ability to build tension surface. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sustain. The climax of the book resembles a Bruce Willis Die Hard finale (or perhaps the latest from John Travolta). There is a lot of destruction and carnage, but not much style.

          While horror as a genre usually requires a degree of ‘suspension of disbelief’, watching a small, conservative, semi-rural town in Maine go from a normal lifestyle to mindless following of a none-too-sharp local politico, casual murder of dissidents, and lynch mob reactions, all in less than one week, is asking a bit much of the reader. Perhaps, if King allowed more time to slip by in those thousand-plus pages, this decent into barbarism would be more believable.

          Then there are the intrusions of the author. In at least one part of the book, it feels like King is directly addressing the reader as we drift together, sans bodies, down main street. King indicates that behind door ‘1’ such-and-such is occurring but “…we’ll pass that for now…”. Behind door ‘2’ something else is happening, but we won’t go there either. Only when we reach door number 3 do we pick up the narrative. Frankly, this felt like a paragraph taken from a children’s book or some eighteenth century gothic tome. Actually, it pulled me totally out of the story as I tried to figure out what the hell King was thinking.

So, did I hate it? Not really. In spite of its unnecessary length, lack of Kings trademark tension, and some quirky narrative techniques, King still must be given credit for clean writing. He can quickly draft a scene and you are able to visualize it. Had he slowed his development of the story in order to create suspense and tension all along the way, as he briefly shows later in the book (and in many of his books), this might have been a story as great as The Stand or as tense as The Shining. As it went to press, it will make a blockbuster movie and be soon forgotten.

I like Stephen King when he does something different.  Of his post-"retirement" novels, Cell is my favorite because he eschewed his typical tourist style of writing and made something fast paced. 

At over 1000 pages, I wouldn't say "Dome" is fast paced, but it's easily the most readable massive tome I've read in a long time.  The story is engaging and King paints his characters beautifully (his best- in "Big Jim" Rennie and his compatriots he's created a league of villains who will keep you reading long into the night just so you can see them get what's coming to them).

The books hums along so well, however its weaknesses manifest in the last fifth, which is actually common with a lot of long books.  For the most part King manages to be very efficient through most of the story, but in the home stretch he runs into patches where characters almost literally talk each other to death about what they're going to do or why this or that is happening, a common King criticism that he more often than not manages to shy away from here. 

The ending is a mixed bag.  The fate of the town is suprising, but the explanation of the dome left me scratching my head.  But these are minor quibbles.  Dome is one of King's best character-driven stories.

Beware!  I would only reccomend this book for those who can really stretch thier imagination!  Think of this book as a test, and then respond to say how you liked it!

Oh, about the review....

I loved 1068 pages out of the 1072 (There was one small segment in the book about how this one character really likes woman's basketball, and it was about three pages).

This one scene about womans basket ball seemed to be the only unimportant part of this book.  Otherwise, I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the idea, I loved the writing.  I highly reccomend this book!