Book Review: Under the Dome - A Novel

Under the Dome: A Novel, by Stephen King

Source: Amazon.com

From the book’s cover:

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.

The review: 

When I first saw this novel on the 'For Sale' rack in a local grocery store, it was around the time that The Simpson's Movie had just come out, and I thought to myself, "why bother to ape that movie?"  Sure, I'm an "old-skool" Simpsons fan, but the feature film made from the series was just plain bad.  And so I'll admit that, by association, the taint of the idea used in that film's plot crossed over to King's novel.  In fact, it would probably have been literally decades before I cracked this one, except that I saw a TV ad for a mini-series depicting the novel in serial form.  I assume this mini-series is coming soon, and so I decided that since it looked interesting, I'd take a look at the book beforehand (at the initial time of this review's writing, the series had not come out, but has since come and gone... and then some).  After all, books are almost ubiquitously better than TV representations of them, and just as often better than Hollywood movies likewise.

The author, Stephen King.  You'd be smiling too if you made as much money as he does by just writing stories. / Source: famousauthors.org

*** Some time later.

As I am now reading along in Under the Dome...  I've had a thought...  if you made a game out of counting the number of times people wet themselves in this book, you might find a mildly entertaining way to pass the time.  It seems like almost everyone in Under the Dome is as like to have an accident sooner or later as anything.

Googling "Under the Dome" brought a plethora of images from the TV mini series based on the novel.  I chose this one as illustrative of the dome's effects.  Too bad the TV people didn't have the budget or CGI skill to do a decent job smashing this truck into a transparent dome at high speed.  Because that would be... well, cool!  Like in the book.  And yes, for those who know what I'm talking about, I purposely avoided the bisected cow.  I do try and avoid overly gruesome pics when I can help it.  Go look it up yourself, if you are curious. / Source: i.kinja-img.com

***  Some time later, again...

Under the Dome is definitely not for sensitive audiences, or for underage consumers.  While there is a bit of sexual content of the consenting and affectionate sort (not too heavily done, I thought), there is far more of sexual depravity, including a bit of rape and even some after-death stuff (thankfully not done in detail, but the idea alone is bad enough).  The language is coarse to an extreme.  Is it me, or is the "F" word so much more prevalent in the post 2008 Housing Crisis world?  If you were using that as a benchmark, that is.  King was never one who kept to his best manners (and its funny that his villain in this novel is so polite in language - a so-called "God-fearing Christian" who is actually as evil a dictator incarnate as they come), but this one is so laced with the word that...  well, there are times when sh*t or damn would have done, but the f-bomb is put in instead.  If such offends you, steer clear of this novel.

Hey, it's almost the whole story in miniature!  Very cool. / Source: pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com

There is quite a bit of violence, and the subject matter is dark and heavy.  There is a catastrophic scene (not to spoil it, so here is where I'll clearly state that a SPOILER ALERT has been called) when the town is burned up by an explosion that erupts when a crazed religious zealot who is in the gripes of a heavy addiction to methamphetamine blows up his drug-making factory, and all the massive supply of propane stored there for making the meth.  The author describes, through one of his characters, the effect being like a nuclear explosion going off inside a hardened glass ball.  Needless to say, few people escape this flaming inferno.  And those who do survive are left facing the threat of a horrific suffocation as the available air to breath slowly runs out on the inside.  It's not a pretty, to say the least.

As for Under the Dome itself, it is pretty good, but certainly not King's best.  At least not what I have read so far.  I'll probably complete this review without having finished the book in it's entirety.  I will complete the book, but I feel I can sufficiently review it at this point, without digesting every single page beforehand.

Even though it is clearly a computer generated image, this scene of the dome covered in ash and soot makes it very clear what could happen if a closed environment was subjected to a major disaster.  I somehow doubt insurance is going to cover anything going on in there. / Source: huffingtonpost.com

Dome does manage to avoid some of the flagging near the end that some others I can think of suffer (Dreamcatcher always comes to mind on that score), even though the elements of politics are well suffused through it.  The grand overall statements being made are pretty clear.  We have commentary on environmental disasters, so-called Evangelical Christians being as evil as any Jihadists, kids being destructive just because they can, the roots of dictatorships...  It's all there.  And I probably missed mentioning some stuff King pontificates upon too.  But the author does it all with his customary style. 

I didn't hate this book - far from it.  Some of the moments Under the Dome captures are so very vivid that they bear lingering upon, simply for the mental imagery they afford the reader.  Then again, there are some parts that left me a little cold, just for the ferocity of the material being covered (as noted previously).  I'd say that if you like Stephen King books as a general rule, I think Under the Dome will probably not disappoint very much.  But if you are new to the author or the genre (horror, as such), this is not a place to start, in my opinion.

Learn more about Under the Dome, by Steven King, on Amazon.com

The parting comment:

As I have said, the plot of Under the Dome evoked The Simpsons Movie.  One of the best parts of that film was President Schwarzenegger's quip, as seen above.