Stephen King’s main site
New York Times Book review
Under the Dome Trailer on Youtube (yes really a book trailer)
Chestersmill.com
Intro:
I just recently finished Stephen King’s 1000+ page sci-fi drama-suspense-thriller? I’m still not 100% sure what to classify this as. Drama? Exposition of the human psyche? Treatise on the environment? Truth be told it hits on a lot of different topics but the focus seems to be the characters. There wasn’t so much going on that I couldn’t follow it and the level of complexity wasn’t ratcheted up so high that anyone couldn’t follow along. Even after the ending, the story definitely sticks with me mostly due to the pull-no-punches type of style that Stephen King has.
1000 page book? I started this on December 25th and finished it March 9th, the relative speed that I finished this I attribute directly to the Amazon Kindle I was given, the one feature it has in particular at the moment that made the 1000 page journey possible is the ability of the Kindle to read to me. I have not read a 1000 page book, nor a 300 page book, in over 9 months. So in no way would I categorize myself as an avid reader, however, in the span that I could’ve read 3 books, I read just 1. This begs the question: Is it worth it? More on that in the rate-down and afterward a decision of the finer points of the book.
The Rate-down:
-Comparison to other books of its type / genre: The closest thing I can think of are stories where a group of people is trapped on an island with limited resources or on a space station with no way of escape. Neither of those really fits an identical situation to Under the Dome, which makes this story stand out even in the thriller / drama or sci-fi genres.
-Biggest Fail: If the premise of the book was to show how every person would respond to a natural disaster or an event that would influence a small group of people at the same time the question that comes to my mind is: “Whose viewpoint is integral to the understand how it affects regular everyday people.” Stephen King I think is attempting to address this question with providing as many as possible and reasonable. However, sometimes there would be a character that is definitely quirky or interesting and doesn’t immediately become apparent why they are the focus of the narrative. I think in the end it works out and most of the myriad of sub-characters do have a reasonable link-in to the general cast. This isn’t a huge failure per se, its more something that if removed would’ve drastically cut the page count down and narrowed the story – likely making it less interesting but perhaps more palatable for more readers.
-Biggest Win: I think there is a two-way tie in this area. The character development is such that I really hated, despised or supported some of them. Some are easily archetypes or metaphors for larger all encompassing groups: such as government, big business, environmentalists. In that respect the characters, at least some of the main ones really worked for me. The story balances life and death, realism and surrealism, fiction and reality all well enough with the character development that even though the “dome” part of the story is likely the biggest part of the story requiring suspension of disbelief everything still holds together.
-Replay Value: Despite my interest in wanting to read this through again to catch some of the details I might have missed, I have no doubt that at some point I’d be willing to just not now. This is mostly attributed to the high page count and the fact that there are many other books to be read. Under the Dome doesn’t really drag or have any lulls in it, there is something going on or important dialogue to follow.
-Worth buying: This is not an easy book to recommend to anyone. The pages do not always fly by and it’s more an R-rated book than anything; not really Harry Potter content-level. The premise is definitely unique and this is NOT a horror story. However it is not a typically 350 page happy resolution crank it out to the next sequel book, these books don’t come along everyday so by merit of uniqueness alone I can’t recommend it. The one thing that does make me want to recommend it is that really I have not seen narrative change with what character is the focus, which develops the characters in a unique way. So I would say if you can stomach a 1000 pages, handle some violence and adult-subject matter as well as be patient enough to let the author lead you through the story, it would be a good buy.
I paid about 1/3rd the price using my Amazon Kindle rather than the hardcover price. If I was to recommend a medium it would be the e-reader version rather than the physical book. Over half of this book was read by text to speech as opposed to straight text and I have to say it makes it easy to consistently “read”
Review:
Unique features of Under the Dome:
-Large cast of characters: Everything from a beaver to a dog, however there are central / pivotal characters, mostly everything small-town business-owners, police, medical staff, house-wives, famers and more. There are at least 12 to 30 semi-main characters and easily dozens of other sub-characters that come up. At first it seemed overwhelming the amount of people, and funny enough once they start dying off it does get easier to see which ones are more important.
-Changing narrative tone: The narrative changes depending on which character is the focus, from small changes in word-choice to how thoughts are internalized, this is definitely unique. I’ve read so many books from junior high, through college and on and I’ve never seen this. From Kafka’s Metamorphosis to Homer’s Odyssey, this style secures Stephen King’s place in literary distinction.
-Command of story narrative: It’s rare in what I would consider “commercial” fiction, to see a author jump into the omniscient third person narrator, literally talking to you directly. If we put this up next to Twilight and Harry Potter, both widely popular and hugely successful (perhaps not entirely from a literary perspective living up to the ideals of academia) Stephen King stands a head above, if not for the pure fact that he directly speaks to you but not necessarily identifies himself. While I found this unnerving at first, I respected and enjoyed it; an author unafraid to tell you the story, lead you by the hand and say, “This is what I want you to see, hear, or witness.” To me, it’s almost completely counter to what I was taught in college as well as what’s out in typical store fiction, that the author should be unobtrusive and seamlessly tell you the story, like a puppet show without the strings.
-Combination of contemporary themes / topics: Whether intentionally or unintentionally, this story hits on some current political issues and its themes cover many interlinked topics including but not limited to: government corruption, pollution / environmentalism, societal issues such as poverty, drug use, lack of hope, suicide, murder, and more. These combinations of themes/ topics, will in some instances can seem raw or unnecessarily I think contribute to the accuracy or realism of the story: in a crisis-type situation there are no limits on what can occur or how varied people are when they react to stress.
Summary:
Good book, worth buying if you can handle the content and the length of the book doesn’t intimidate you. The eBook version is more palatable if you can get your hands on it on a text-to-speech enabled e-reader. If not I’m sure the textbook version is perfectly fine. The story is unique and the writing definitely stands out in comparison to horror / thrillers as well as just literature in general. If long books are not your thinking and narration about 50 characters doesn’t excite you, then I’d steer clear of this and buy your typical book to DVD once its out or just head straight for a 300 page paperback.