Under The Dome is about a town that becomes inexplicably closed off by an invisible dome. The story follows the struggles that the citizens face being trapped by the dome and the mystery surrounding what created the invisible barrier.
I wanted to do something movie-poster style because the book feels very cinematic. (Apparently someone agrees with me on this one, as they're making an Under The Dome TV show) The characters here as I pictured them from top left to right are: Big Jim Rennie, Dale Barbara, Junior Rennie, The Chef, Julia Shumway, and Rusty Everett.
2/5 Stars
Read the review after the jump.
2/5 Stars
Under The Dome is something I’d expect from a first time author, not someone so prolific and successful as King. I can’t help but feel that the intriguing concept in another writer’s hands would have been amazing. I was looking forward to diving into some of Stephen King’s other work before I read Under The Dome but now I don’t see myself picking up any of his other books for quite some time.
Finishing a good book tends to make me crave more. I’m anxious until I start another book the author wrote. It’s like a snowball effect. Well, more like some kind of literary addiction, but you get the point. Even if I don’t particularly care for a book, I’ll quickly continue my voracious consumption of literature but switch to another genre or author. Usually, I’m always reading something.
That being said, after I put down Stephen King’s Under The Dome I had no desire to pick up another book. Before I read Under The Dome I was fascinated by Stephen King, though I’d (Embarrassingly) never read any of his fiction books. Sure, I read “On Writing”, and enjoyed the movies, Carrie, It, The Mist, The Shining, blahblahblah.. But despite all of that and my love of the horror genre I never sat down and read Stephen King’s fiction. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to. I’d just inevitably get distracted by another book and put it off. Now after finishing Under The Dome, my fascination with King has been killed. Or at least beaten near to death.
Why is that? Firstly, Under The Dome felt like a chore to read. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Sometimes when books are hard to get through it’s because they’re tackling trying subjects that put you into a certain emotional mindset. Other stories may take some time to plow through but in the end the conclusion leaves the reader feeling like the long journey was worth it. Not Under The Dome, the way the threads are tied up in the end is abrupt and not at all satisfying enough to justify the arduous and unsurprising journey. I kept hoping that there would be some epic finale that would make everything click. There was not.
Stephen King sucked all the mystery out of a book that could have otherwise been surprising and at least somewhat suspenseful. I quickly got tired of his heavy handed method of blatantly informing the reader anytime something exciting was about to happen. At the end of a chapter before every big story point he would essentially write, “But little did they know.. They would be dead by morning.” That’s not a direct quote obviously, but it’s pretty close. it felt like he was yelling at you, “HEY GUYS, SOMETHING BIG AND TRAGIC IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THIS CHARACTER SOON, KEEP READING.. PLEASE.” I wished he would stop telling me that a big surprise was around the corner, and just let me read the events as they unfolded so that you know.. I might actually be surprised.
The characters were just as predictable as the plot. Most of the women seemed like they shared one singular personality among them. The male characters had two personalities to choose from which basically boiled down to the “Good or bad” guy with little nuance in between. The three pre-teens in the book seemed to be so out of touch with how actual pre-teens behave that it was cringe-worthy. The protagonists in the story don’t really win you over through any actions of their own, in fact they make a lot of unbelievably stupid decisions so that you almost feel they deserve their fate. The only thing that makes you root for the protagonist is how tyrannical and insane the father-son villain duo in the story are.
Under The Dome is something I’d expect from a first time author, not someone so prolific and successful as King. I can’t help but feel that the intriguing concept in another writer’s hands would have been amazing. I was looking forward to diving into some of Stephen King’s other work before I read Under The Dome but now I don’t see myself picking up any of his other books for quite some time.
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