Under The Dome

Author: Stephen King

Goodreads Rating: 3.83

My Rating: 3/5 Stars

Pages: 1072

Reviewed by: Amy

Synopses from Goodreads.com:

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.

Review with spoilers after the jump!

** spoiler alert ** So I give this 3 stars which I think is fair. The book didn't really blow me away with a huge reveal or anything. In fact, it just kinda puttered on. So I'll go into what I liked and disliked about the book...

WARNING WARNING WARNING!!! CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!!!! (at Number 4)

1) It was a good show of mass hysteria and political corruption in response to a local disaster. As the story progresses, you see the good and bad really come out in the people of the town. However, I also think this was major worst case scenario.

2) Going along with seeing how the characters act and react, there are a LOT of characters you have to keep up with in the book. You have your definite main characters, but there a lot of secondary characters in the book that have roles to play and even their own "chapters". I didn't understand who a lot of the characters were until maybe a quarter of the way through (which in a 1000+ page book, is quite a way through).

3) Stephen King does make a great and realistic setting with Chester's Mill. All the characters does help you get the feel of a good, close-knit community, down to the stores and roads, which the map of the town in the beginning helped a lot.

4) There were elements of a supernatural being (I'm calling it an alien). I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this... This ties into the ending as well. I like the idea of the "ants under a magnifying glass" thing, however the "alien" didn't feel remorse for what they did and didn't learn anything. It was even mentioned that they would probably go on and do it again somewhere else. The people of the town (those still alive) did learn to appreciate life but I figured that surviving that ordeal, appreciation of life was a given.

The book overall wasn't horrible. I enjoyed learning about the characters and was sad when some people died (and disappointed when the "villain" of the book died.... it should have been a little more dramatic in my opinion but hallucinations work lol) and going through their trials with them. However, the negatives listed above, including the puttering out of the ending was what lead me to give his book only 3 stars.