Under The Dome by Stephen King

Under The Dome

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when -- or if -- it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

At First Sight
This book, at more than 1,000 pages, is highly intimidating and daunting. All you can think of when you see it is, "How am I going to finish this?" But then you look at the description and you say, "Hm, this is a very interesting concept." I took the latter thought when deciding to buy the book.

My Thoughts:
I might start of saying that it took me since December to finally finish this book (this week). The thing is, every time I picked it up it was the same thing, "Oh, it will be forever until I finish." And, visually, it's intimidating. You could divide this novel into a trilogy and I would have read it faster.

Nevertheless, it was a great book to read. The gigantic cast of characters might be confusing at first but then you start to realize that the most important characters start to blossom and you find yourself rooting (or hating) them.

I've never read a Stephen King book before this one and, although some crude and graphic scenes were depicted, I was glad that the pure gore and horror wasn't really there. I fell in love with this book because I'm a junkie for apocalyptic style books that present some sort of 'end of the world' vibe.

Final thoughts: read this book if you are not easily intimidated by number of pages and can handle a big list of characters. The writing is of course fantastic but it's not a walk-in-the-park sort of books and definitely not for everyone.

Plot: 5
Characters: 4
Writing: 5
Cover: 5
Overall Feeling: 4
Average: 4.6 stars