• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Stephen King: Under the Dome

That fact doesn't make it any easier to tolerate. It's a good device to involve the reader in the story, become emotionally invested, none of us like to feel powerless in the face of corrupted authority.
 
Finished. This one is definitely a page turner, I dunno who edited this one, but they deserve some kudos as usually with King's larger books I think they need a good pruning. But this one, even at 1,073 pages, is pared down to just the narrative and that's it and it flies by. I think it's also his most political book, but this is also the first one I've read by him since the last volume of The Dark Tower, so maybe politics have been creeping into his work in the past 5 years.
 
lenny nero said:
Finished. This one is definitely a page turner, I dunno who edited this one, but they deserve some kudos as usually with King's larger books I think they need a good pruning. But this one, even at 1,073 pages, is pared down to just the narrative and that's it and it flies by. I think it's also his most political book, but this is also the first one I've read by him since the last volume of The Dark Tower, so maybe politics have been creeping into his work in the past 5 years.
Click to expand...

I still have about 1/5 of the way left but I also noticed that it isn't overly descriptive the way many of his books are. In fact, I'm not certain I would have been able to guess it was a Stephen King novel if I hadn't known.
 
Anybody else catch King's reference to Jack Reacher? Other than King, Lee Child is one of my all time favorites when it comes to story telling.
 
I really liked it. Many different character arcs coming together at once, not unlike The Stand. Not as good as the Stand, but an entertaining read. Like many of Kings novels, I did not love his ending…but a page turner all the same.
 
Well, I like all Stephen Kings books, for me he is one of the best writers...I havent read Under the Dome yet, but I have no doubt that I will enjoy reading it...His stories really take you on a adventure, and sometimes I couldnt get away from the book until I read it.
 
I thought the book was a solid 8 / 10 overall. Big Jim Rennie was by far the best character, Barbie was ok, though I never felt a whole lot for him.

The best King novel I've read in recent years was Duma Key.
 
So I started reading this on the side, and found myself sucked right in. Again. Evidently, I never learn.

King certainly doesn't waste any time getting the carnage going, does he? Within a couple of (very short) chapters, people have been beaten to death, exploded in mid-air, died in car crashes, and a poor innocent groundhog has been bisected. And I still find myself going "D'OH...ME!" at the end of every chapter.
awww.gifmania.co.uk_Simpsons_Homer_Simpson_ani_182.gif
 
Justin91 said:
He claims to have never seen the Simpsons Movie. But since King did start this one in the 80's, maybe the Simpson’s Movie writers had some "inspiration".
Click to expand...

And funnily enough, King has one of the main characters quite Ralph Wiggum early on. Funny how that works. :whistling:
 
So, Under The Dome.

Small town (in Maine, duh) suddenly gets sealed off from the outside world by an invisible force field. After the initial shocks and a few grisly deaths, things get worse as the local republican bigwig seizes the opportunity to convince people to give up freedom for safety and quickly and efficiently sets himself up as dictator. Leading to more grisly deaths, an incredibly unsubtle parable about paranoia in Bush-era US, and funnily enough one of King's most entertaining novels in a while.

Which isn't to say it's great, by King standards or otherwise. Even if you shrug and accept the blatant political subtext (whether you agree or disagree, getting hit with the Message Bat always hurts), you're still stuck with a story that repeats a number of old King storylines without necessarily adding anything new to them; it's basically The Mist (one of the characters even compares it to the movie) meets The Stand. And if you start picking at the details, there are a number of things that make little sense (so the phones are cut off, but TV and Internet still work, and yet the citizens of the town immediately start acting as if there is no way at all to communicate with the outside world, or tell them what's going on in town...? What?)

That said, for a 1000+ page novel, it really zips. The advantage of King sticking to favourite subplots and character types is that he knows exactly what he's doing (unlike the ambitious but inept Lisey's Story) and while you could probably edit 100 pages or more out without losing much, he manages to juggle the dozens of main characters and their various story arcs well enough that there's never really a dull moment. King's approach to epic stories (put good guys and bad guys in the same pressure cooker, have the bad guys do awful things to the good guys until we beg him to stop torturing them, and then keep it up a while longer) is predictable but effective, and the thing that once helped make me a King fan - that you can never trust that the good guys will succeed, and certainly not escape unscathed - is still there. As political allegory, it's clumsy and overwritten; as straight-ahead action with blatant emotional manipulation, it works.

:star3:
 
Well, finally finished this one. I am not a very fast reader so this took me a little while (about 3 weeks) it being over a 1000 pages. It was classic Stephen King though, great story, great characters. I am not really down with the whole origin of the dome though. Therefore, I wasn't impressed with the conclusion, but the book is still worth reading.

:star3:
 
I just finished Under the Dome and I thought it was amazing. I loved all the character development, and I was genuinely sad to see a few of them go, while others I found myself wishing they met an early demise (a little sadistic, but thats alright...right?). I agree that the origin of the dome was a little dissappointing, but at the same time I am glad that King did not spend too much time on it and focused more on the people in the dome.

Did anyone else find it odd, if not a little funny that almost every character had a bloody nose in the begining half of the book, then in the second half everyone seemed to be loosing pieces of their heads from gunshots?

This was my first King book that I read, which is why it is currently the best book I have read of it's genre, but I have Duma Key sitting on my table begging to be opened, so who knows if that will replace Under the Dome at the top.

:star5:
 
Banocanut said:
This was my first King book that I read, which is why it is currently the best book I have read of it's genre, but I have Duma Key sitting on my table begging to be opened, so who knows if that will replace Under the Dome at the top.
Click to expand...

Duma Key takes a little while to get going but when it does it is classic King.

I had stopped reading Stephen King for a couple of years, because he seemed to have gotten soft. Somebody gave me Duma Key as a X-mas gift a couple of years ago, so I said what the hack I'll give it a go. I was not disappointed at all.
 
I wish King would stop with the foreboding "This was the last thing she did" or "He would soon realize he made a big mistake"-type sentences. If you're going to use foreshadowing, fine, but employ some subtlety while doing it. He did the same thing in Duma Key too. Otherwise I really enjoyed this book. It's one of his biggest, bloodiest works yet.
 
I read Under the Dome about two years ago. It was quite a read for me, seeing as I was only thirteen at the time and reading a book with over 1,000 pages. I read the majority of it at school only, so that contributed largely to why it took me over a month to finish.
During my reading however, I greatly enjoyed it. I loved the never-ending suspense that progressed with the story. I found it fascinating how Big Jim eventually began to succumb into delirium; the same for his son.
Rusty and Barbie were my favorite characters. I love the instinctual survival Barbie inherited and his overall attitude throughout the book. Rusty was such a sincere, kind-hearted fellow. A desolate sorrow overwhelmed me when I read his death.
I have not read any of Stephen King's other works, but after reading Under the Dome I feel influenced to do just so.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top