Under the Dome: A Novel
Just finished reading "Under the Dome" by Stephen King and the first word that pops into mind: whoa.
I was slightly intimidated by the length of this book (a whopping 823 pages), but once I started reading, the length was the last thing on my mind. At the start, the main character of the book, Dale "Barbie" Barbara, an Iraq war veteran-turned-short-order cook, is on his way out of the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine when "the Dome" suddenly comes down, cutting Chester's Mill off from the rest of the world. This isolation fuels the creation of an entirely different world within "the Dome", and there are a few residents of Chester's Mill who actually want the Dome to stick around, for their own nefarious purposes. On what Chester's Mill residents refer to as "Dome Day", and during the days that follow, people die, agendas are revealed, and nothing is as it seems. Seriously. Meanwhile, many of the children of the town begin to experience seizures that include the same haunting visions.
Throughout the book, hypotheses about what the Dome is and where it came from are discussed, running the gamut from a government experiment gone awry to an alien takeover. The actual cause of the Dome coming down is definitely shocking and very intriguing.
There is a very large cast of different characters with unique voices and, though this may not come easily to some authors, Mr. King accomplishes it very well. He also used foreshadowing very well, which was one of the things that kept me locked-in, page after page.
The only negative aspect of this book was that the climax at the end proved to be a bit anti-climactic for me. However, that might be because I was so amped-up throughout the book that I was expecting something entirely different. You be the judge.
