GrinchyNet

I am a huge Stephen King fan, been one since I was a wee boy. So needless to say I had a copy of his new book Under the Dome the day it came out thanks to an awesome wife I have. I finished the book yesterday and thought I would share my views of the book.

The book is long, around 1100 pages. The story is good. The ending sucked.

The basic premise of the book is a mysterious dome is placed over the little town of Chester Mill. It is your typical North East small town which is very typical of King's work. What is not typical is the type of people who live in this poor city.

Within the first 20 or so pages there are scores of people dead as a result of the dome coming down. People bled to death as the dome cut a limb off. Several fatal car accidents happen because of the dome. People and animals dying all over the place. There is also two murders. The book starts off with a bang and just keeps rolling.

Stephen King never fails to point out the flaws of humans. He tends to show us what kind of monsters we really can be and this book is no exception. The town of Chester Mill is put under considerable stress because of the dome and one person takes advantage of this and basically starts creating a communist state where he is the sole person in charge and you live or die at his whim.

The story itself is wonderful. You have these factions of people trying to survive the Dome. One is just trying to survive and working to get rid of the dome, the other is hell bent on ruling the town with an iron fist and really doesn't want the Dome to come down as it would destroy what he has built. Unfortunately for him his plans back fire and he ends of destroying everything under the Dome, including himself.

The only problem I had with the book is the end and where the Dome came from. Of course the Dome is supernatural and was put in place by cruel alien children. The analogy of kids burning ants with a magnifying glass is used in the book and that is basically what it is. These alien kids don't view us as important, we are make-believe to them and the fact that the humans were destroying themselves didn't matter, they were toys.

The environment under the Dome has become inhabitable due to a large explosion involving propane and chemicals, oxygen has been depleted, the few remaining survivors are dying. They get the bright idea to beg the aliens to let them go and it works. The dome is lifted and roughly 10 people have survived. That is the end. I found that to be just dumb but quite honestly I don't know how I would have ended it either. You only had two choices really. Let everyone die or get the Dome lifted.

I guess Stephen did what he had to do to end the story. It was really disappointing though.

Overall it is a very entertaining story and I think worth the read regardless of the ending.

Here is a video of Stephen King reading the first chapter of the book.

http://stephenking.com/mediaplayer.php?category=0&request=2