Amazon Exclusive: Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan Reviews Under the Dome Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan share their enthusiasm for Stephen King 's thriller, Under the Dome . This pair of reviewers knows a thing or two about the art of crafting a great thriller. Del Toro is the Oscar-nominated director of international blockbuster films, including Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy . Hogan is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Standoff and Prince of Thieves , which won the International Association of Crime Writer's Dashiell Hammett Award in 2005. The two recently collaborated to write the bestselling horror novel, The Strain , the first of a proposed trilogy. Read their exclusive Amazon guest review of Under the Dome : The first thing readers might find scary about Stephen King's Under The Dome is its length. The second is the elaborate town map and list of characters at the front of the book (including "Dogs of Note"), which sometimes portends, you know, heavy lifting. Don't you believe it. Breathless pacing and effortless characterization are the hallmarks of King's best books, and here the writing is immersive, the suspense unrelenting. The pages turn so fast that your hand--or Kindle-clicking thumb--will barely be able to keep up. You Are Here. Nobody yarns a “What if?” like Stephen King. Nobody. The implausibility of a dome sealing off an entire city--a motif seen before in pulp magazines and on comic book covers--is given the most elaborate real-life alibi by crafting details, observations, and insights that make us nod silently while we read. Promotional materials reference The Stand in comparison, but we liken Under The Dome more to King's excellent novella, The Mist : another locked-door situation on an epic scale, a tour-de-force in which external stressors bake off the civility of a small town full of dark secrets, exposing souls both very good...and very, very bad. Yes, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," but there is so much more this time. The expansion of King’s diorama does not simply take a one-street fable and turn it into a town, but finds new life for old archetypes, making them morally complex and attuned to our world today. It makes them relevant and affecting once again. And the beauty of it all is that the final lesson, the great insight that is gained at the end of this draining journey, is not a righteous 1950’s sermon but an incredibly moving and simple truth. A nugget of wisdom you'll be using as soon as you turn the last page. This Is Now. Along the way, you get bravura writing, especially featuring the town kids, and a delicious death aria involving one of the most nefarious characters--who dies alone, but not really--as well as a few laugh-out-loud moments, and a cameo (of sorts) by none other than Jack Reacher. Indeed--whether during a much-needed comfort break, or a therapeutic hand-flexing--you may find yourself wondering, "Is this a horror novel? Or is it a thriller?" The answer, of course, is: Yes, yes, yes. "...the blood hits the wall like it always hits the wall." It seems impossible that, as he enters his sixth decade of publishing, the dean of dark fiction could add to his vast readership. But that is precisely what will happen...when the Dome drops. Now Go Read It. --Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan The Story Behind the Cover Click on image to enlarge The jacket concept for Under the Dome originated as an ambitious idea from the mind of Stephen King . The artwork is a combination of photographs, illustration and 3-D rendering. This is a departure from the direction of King's most recent illustrated covers. In order to achieve the arresting image for this jacket, Scribner art director Rex Bonomelli had to seek out artists who could do a convincing job of creating a realistic portrayal of the town of Chester's Mill, the setting of the novel. Bonomelli found the perfect team of digital artists, based in South America and New York, whose cutting edge work had previously been devoted to advertisement campaigns. This was their first book jacket and an exciting venture for them. "They are used to working with the demands of corporate clients," says Bonomelli. "We gave them freedom and are thrilled with what they came up with." The CGI (computer generated imagery) enhanced image looks more like something made for the big screen than for the page and is sure to make a lasting impact on King fans. Meet the Characters Dale Barbara Barbie, a drifter, ex-army, walks with a burden of guilt from the time he spent in Iraq. Working as a short-order cook at Sweetbriar Rose is the closest thing he’s had to a family life. When his old commander, Colonel Cox, calls from outside, Barbie's burden becomes the town itself. Julia Shumway The attractive Editor and Publisher of the local town newspaper, The Chester's Mill Democrat, Julia is self-assured and Republican to the core, but she is drawn to Barbie and discovers, when it matters most, that her most vulnerable moment might be her most liberating. Jim Rennie, Sr. "Big Jim." A used car dealer with a fierce smile and no warmth, he'd given his heart to Jesus at age sixteen and had little left for his customers, his neighbors, or his dying wife and deteriorating son. The town's Second Selectman, he’s used to having things his way. He walks like a man who has spent his life kicking ass. Joseph McClatchey Scarecrow Joe, a 13-year-old also known as "King of the Geeks" and "Skeletor, a bona fide brain whose backpack bears the legend "fight the powers that be." He’s smarter than anyone, and proves it in a crisis. Chester's Mill, Maine (click on image to enlarge) From Publishers Weekly King's return to supernatural horror is uncomfortably bulky, formidably complex and irresistibly compelling. When the smalltown of Chester's Mill, Maine, is surrounded by an invisible force field, the people inside must exert themselves to survive. The situation deteriorates rapidly due to the dome's ecological effects and the machinations of Big Jim Rennie, an obscenely sanctimonious local politician and drug lord who likes the idea of having an isolated populace to dominate. Opposing him are footloose Iraq veteran Dale “Barbie” Barbara, newspaper editor Julia Shumway, a gaggle of teen skateboarders and others who want to solve the riddle of the dome. King handles the huge cast of characters masterfully but ruthlessly, forcing them to live (or not) with the consequences of hasty decisions. Readers will recognize themes and images from King's earlier fiction, and while this novel doesn't have the moral weight of, say, The Stand, nevertheless, it's a nonstop thrill ride as well as a disturbing, moving meditation on our capacity for good and evil. (Nov.) From Bookmarks Magazine Stephen King. Come for the story, stay for the, well ... stay for the story. Even the most positive reviewers of King's latest doorstop felt compelled to mention King's writing style: how he drops a bad sentence every now and then or knocks out a few lines of tinny dialogue. Whom are the critics kidding? After keeping the publishing industry solvent since the Ford administration, King has become review proof. Sure, Under the Dome is a bit of social commentary and satire thinly disguised as a bloodbath. In Chester's Mill, the only thing higher than the price of propane is the body count. But that's the fun, and King is at full throttle. Read the book. Enjoy it. There will be no quiz. "Propulsively intriguing... Staggeringly addictive." -- USA Today "Tight and energetic from start to finish... Hard as this thing is to hoist, it's even harder to put down." -- New York Times "The work of a master storyteller having a whole lot of fun." -- Los Angeles Times "King returns to his glory days of The Stand ." -- New York Daily News "A wildly entertaining trip." -- People (3.5 stars)" Under the Dome moves so fast and grips the reader so tightly that it's practically incapacitating." -- Newsday "Stephen King's Under the Dome was one of my favourite books of the year so far." -- Neil Gaiman" Dome is classic King, sure to please any fan." -- Baltimore Sun "Spellbinding." -- ABCnews.com Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers.xa0His recent work includes Holly , Fairy Tale , Billy Summers , If It Bleeds , The Institute , Elevation , The Outsider , Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch , Findersxa0Keepers ,xa0and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winnerxa0for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named axa0top ten book of 2011 by Thexa0New York Timesxa0Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower , It , Pet Sematary , Doctor Sleep , and Firestarter are the basis forxa0major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipientxa0of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, thexa02014 National Medal of Arts, and thexa02003 National Book Foundation Medal forxa0Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.xa0He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife,xa0novelist Tabitha King. From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Graham Joyce In 2002 Stephen King announced that he'd given up writing. Yes, and the Queen of England said she'd had it with servants and fancy carriages and was off to do volunteer work in Somalia. . . . You can't write 2,000 words a day for more than three decades and suddenly stop. Because, as King knows perfectly well, you don't give up writing; writing gives up you, but only when it's good and done with you. And writing isn't done with King, not by a long shot. Here we are, several years after this putative abdication, with a novel that comes thumping in at more than 1,000 pages. In an author's note, King says he started "Under the Dome" in 1976 but then "crept away from it with my tail between my legs. . . . I was terrified of screwing it up." Fortunately, he found the confidence to return to this daunting story because the result is one of his most powerful novels ever. On a beautiful, crisp October morning in Chester's Mill, Maine, a plane falls from the sky; a farmer's John Deere blows up, taking the farmer with it; a woman's hand is severed; a truck crashes into nothing. A transparent dome has mysteriously descended over the town's perimeter, sealing it off from the outside world. This science-fiction premise isn't new, but there is more than one way to seal a dome. It's a literary technique we might call the crucible: a simple device to contain the characters and restrict flight from the drama ahead, enabling the author by increments to turn up the heat. "Lord of the Flies" is a classic example, circumscribing events by trapping those boys on an island. The dome itself is not terribly important, and once it is in situ, it allows the author to get on with his real purpose. That purpose reveals King's greatest qualities as a writer. Life under the dome, with finite resources and with the best and worst of human nature emerging, soon deteriorates. Small-town politicians and newspaper publishers adopt conflicting positions. There is a scramble for resources. The air quickly becomes polluted. Citizens start to panic, and corruption, in the form of sleazy, villainous alderman Jim Rennie, drives the town and its police force as martial law takes over. Outside, the government's efforts to puncture the dome are useless. Federal officials think they have a man on the inside, ex-captain now short-order cook Dale Barbara, a disillusioned veteran of the Persian Gulf War. The government wants to concentrate its efforts through Barbara, and we see the town through his eyes, too. Only trouble is, Rennie and his ragtag police force take exception to the idea of Barbara exercising any authority. Rennie also wants to keep hidden his lucrative sideline in the manufacture of crystal meth. Very early the story begins to trigger strange echoes, because we are deep in the world of a cleverly operated allegory. Yet never once do we doubt the veracity of this large cast of characters. The psychological insight into these small-town people is pin-sharp, vivid and utterly convincing. King's greatness lies in his uncanny genius for creating characters and understanding the hive-mind of a community. The dome itself remains pretty much the only supernatural element in the novel (give or take some references to the super-sensitivity of dogs). Unlike "The Stand," another book with a large cast and often considered to be King's best, this is a realist novel. It's also a foot-on-the-gas-narrative told in breathless idiomatic style. King couldn't give two hoots for ornamental language or lyrical phrasing, but you've got to admire him for making this so compelling. Although he's an undisputed master of suspense and terror, what gives King's work heft is his moral clarity. The harrowing climax of "Under the Dome" stems from a humane vision. It's another work in an oeuvre that identifies compassion as the antidote to evil, whether that evil be human or supernatural. And our stock of literature in the great American Gothic tradition is brilliantly replenished because of it. [email protected] Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Read more
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bestselling thriller from Stephen King that inspired the hit television series, following the apocalyptic scenario of a town cut off from the rest of the world.
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.
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Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
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The Fate of the World, Under Glass
A small New England town is suddenly, inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world, trapping a large cast of characters inside (or outside) a huge, clear dome. As the emergency escalates, various heroes (and villains) emerge to play a part in the drama. What is the dome? Why is it there? Will the town survive? This is the premise of Stephen King's big, long, thoroughly fascinating new novel.
King has rarely written a book as ambitious as this. As I was reading, I was constantly wondering about the motives behind the deceptively simple story. As with the best of horror and science fiction, it isn't just about a monster on the rampage. What clearly interests King--and us, the readers--is the reaction of the "ordinary" people of Chester's Mill, Maine, who are placed in this extraordinary situation. In the struggles of these heroes, villains, lovers, and fools, we can all see ourselves. And that is the mark of a great work of art, isn't it?
I've been reading Stephen King for 35 years now--I read his first 3 novels in college--and I've always been impressed by his work. But UNDER THE DOME is in a small group of King stories that go far beyond merely being entertaining fiction. This novel will inevitably be compared to [[ASIN:0451169530 The Stand]] because it deals with the horrors of the world around us. Forget ghosts and vampires and space aliens--there's nothing as horrifying as what humans are capable of doing to one another. Stephen King knows that: it's the reason his stories are so effective. In his long, distinguished career, he's rarely been as effective--or as entertaining--as he is here. UNDER THE DOME is a fast-paced modern horror story, and it's also an amazingly perceptive modern novel. Highly recommended.
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★★★★★
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Disturbing but addicting thriller
Stephen King, no novice at penning lengthy tomes, turns in another 1,000-plus-page behemoth with Under the Dome, a book he started writing in 1976 but abandoned for more than three decades. More than 30 years later, with one of the most remarkable literary careers in history under his belt, he tackled the project again, this time completing a story that plumbs the depths of human wickedness.
The town of Chester's Mill, Maine, is a pretty typical-seeming smallish New England community. It has a diner, a used car dealership, a couple of churches, a supermarket, a newspaper, and a religious radio station. Most of its 2,000 or so residents are good, honest people who genuinely care for each other and for their town.
The scene changes abruptly when a mysterious and invisible barrier materializes out of nowhere, completely cutting the town off from the rest of the world. Within minutes, the death toll begins to rise. A plane smashes into the barrier followed by a number of cars. As scientists and government and military officials scramble to find a way to break through the barrier, those inside the dome have to quickly adjust to their new reality. And with Stephen King manning the controls, it's just a matter of time before that reality turns sinister.
Within days, Chester's Mill turns into a depressing cauldron of murder, corruption, conspiracy, and increasing fear. The town's police fall under the control of a vicious town selectman with dictatorial ambitions. Resources are seized. Vocal dissenters are jailed--or worse. Soon the air quality inside the dome begins to change. Illnesses increase. Children begin to have seizures and frightening visions. Fear leads to anger, and people start to do things they wouldn't have dreamed of just days earlier. As tension mounts, the stage is set for a final cataclysmic showdown between those who will stop at nothing to enforce their agenda for the town and those who believe the town's increasingly dangerous leaders must be stopped at any cost.
On some levels, Under the Dome is almost allegorical. The town's blossoming dictatorship is reminiscent of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, with a charismatic leader ruling by force, police who operate outside the law, and "police solidarity" armbands for citizens. The worsening environment inside the dome could be a picture of climate change. The fact that the villains are all right-wing fundamentalist Christians (extremely hypocritical Christians at that) is probably a statement of some sort, and there are a few references to Falujah that some might see as antimilitary. In any case, whether or not the author intended to send a message through the story, the book absolutely illustrates the tendency of power to corrupt and the inherent wickedness of the human heart.
Under the Dome is not an easy book to read, and not only because of its size. Readers familiar with King's work will be unsurprised to find foul language and sexual content, some of it disturbing (most notably a gang rape scene and hints of necrophilia). There's plenty of violence, quite a bit of drug use, and lots of examples (very nearly too many, in fact) of people treating each other in all kinds of horrible ways. Though the dome is the reason the townspeople are in their predicament, the real conflict in the book is not people vs. the dome but people vs. each other. This book could just as easily have been titled The Worst-Case Scenario because on page after page, just when it seems the forces of good might be about to catch a break, King pulls the rug out from under them yet again. There's very little in the way of a redemptive message.
Yet all this is offset by King's trademark brilliance in character development and plot pacing, and much of the prose is beautifully crafted. King utilizes an antiquated but effective technique in his narration, slipping into present tense and addressing the reader directly at times to draw attention to a particular item of interest in a scene or to explicitly foreshadow some coming tragedy. Careful readers will find a few references to other Stephen King books peppered throughout.
When he wants to, Stephen King is capable of writing stunningly beautiful stories championing the human spirit in the face of extreme adversity (Duma Key is an example). Under the Dome is not such a book. This is a story about human ugliness, and it's all the more uncomfortable because it rings true. Even so, the brilliance of King's writing is evident on every one of the 1,074 pages. Fair warning: don't start this book unless you have some time on your hands. Uncomfortable though the book may be, it's compelling and suspenseful, and once you start reading, it quickly becomes very difficult to put down.
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★★★★★
2.0
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Disappointed -- can't quite put my finger on why
Me: Huge King fan. I have five bookshelves with nothing but King -- not just books BY King but books ABOUT his books. Hardcover firsts, special limited editions, graphic novels, and some books I bought only because King wrote the introduction. I've read him from the beginning and have been repaid with hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Anyone else remember the Castle Rock newsletter put out by his secretary?
I was enthralled with the first couple hundred pages of Under the Dome. Clear, concise language, vivid images, a well-paced story, and some characters who looked like they were going to be interesting. When the characters failed to develop and it became apparent that most of them were introduced just so we could watch them die in various ways, my interest flagged. Pretty soon I was reading just to get it all over with.
Now it's over. With the best books, you have the sense that the characters lived before you met them and that they will live on when you close the book. Stu Redman is still with me. So is Annie Wilkes. Jack Torrance. But the people of Chester's Mill never came alive -- they're just characters in a novel, thinly drawn pawns that King played with for awhile, moving them here and there without much thought or care.
Specific complaints -- unrealistic expository dialogue, an almost-cartoonish villain, too much foreshadowing that someone was going to die (sometimes King spoils his own books), and a few unbelievable and contrived spots where if you know anything at all about how things really work, you're taken right out of the story.
Maybe if I hadn't been looking forward to this book for so long, it wouldn't have been so disappointing. I hyped it up in my own mind. I'll never do that again.
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5.0
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And THAT is Stephen King's genius
From the moment I heard the premise of Under the Dome, I couldn't wait to read it. Here it is in a nutshell: On a perfectly ordinary fall day, an invisible, impregnable barrier surrounds the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine. Nightmare ensues. And I do mean nightmare. Uncle Stevie isn't playing around. This isn't one of his tall tales filled with imaginary monsters and buckets of gore. The monsters here are human, and they are terrifying.
Okay, as an editor, when I see a 1,000+ page novel, my first thought is, "Does it really need to be this long?" Maybe not. I'm sure a few pages could have been trimmed. But I will tell you this... The deeper I got into this novel, the quicker I turned pages--right up until the end, when I was in a veritable page-turning frenzy. It reminded me, right from the start, of the fine work he did in the 70's, when as a child I devoured each new novel upon publication. King hasn't lost his touch with character, and he remains a consummate storyteller.
Under the Dome is epic. The time span is short, but the novel deals with the lives of more than 2,000 people trapped in a combustible hothouse. These are truly terrifying and incomprehensible circumstances. Things in Chester's Mill are bad, and hour by hour the situation got so much worse I didn't want to believe it. But I did. I believed it all. And THAT is Stephen King's genius.
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★★★★★
1.0
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Avoid this novel like it's the super-flu.
In 1868, Samuel ("Mark Twain") Clemens published a short story entitled "Cannibalism in the Cars" which told the gruesome story of a group of men -- politicians, in fact -- who were trapped in a train for over a week during a blizzard. After about a week, these men realize that, in order to survive, cannibalism would be the only viable solution. Thus, and in painstaking observation of parliamentary procedure, these occupants nominate and elect their individuals amongst their brethren to be sacrificed for the remaining members.
In the hands of Clemens, it was political satire at its finest.
Stephen King has always fancied Clemens. Indeed, his novel THE TALISMAN (with Peter Straub) was a homage of sorts to TOM SAWYER. But, in the hands of King (one of my favorite contemporary authors, no lie), what tries to be a satire of social commentary becomes instead an overbearing, overwritten over-the-top political manifesto.
UNDER THE DOME found its genesis as a novel entitled THE CANNIBALS, and over the ensuing three decades morphed into 1000+ page ham-fisted rant against Christianity, Republicans in general, Bush and Cheney in particular (thinly disguised here as the 1st and 2nd Selectmen of Chester's Mill), the Iraq war, global warming and all other issues du jour that aggrieve the political left. Understand: King (like any other US citizen) is entitled to his opinion and has the right to express it. Here's the problem: King commits the one cardinal sin of story-telling; he allows his own political bias to get in the way of the narrative. The story (and King himself has said that, in writing, the most important thing is "Story, dammit, story!") stinks. The characters -- particularly "Big Jim" Rennie, "Junior" Rennie, and Dale "Barbie" Barbara -- are two-dimensional charicatures, with all the depth of a coat of spray paint. King is so intent on conveying his hatred for Dick Cheney (aka the hypocritical, Bible-quoting, drug-dealing "Big Jim" Rennie) and lecturing us on the perceived immorality of the Iraq war (through the jaded eyes of Dale Barbara) that King loses sight of the storyline. None of his characters (with the possible exception of "The Chef" -- himself a quasi re-tread of King's Trashcan Man) are interesting; and the story itself is bogged down in bloated verbiage.
In his introduction to King's short story collection NIGHT SHIFT, John D. MacDonald spoke of the hazards of narrative intrusion; i.e., the temptation to wax philosophic in a "look-Ma-how-nice-I'm-writing" style. It breaks the reader's concentration and shocks the reader out of the story. MacDonald praised King for never doing that. In UNDER THE DOME, King does it . . . again . . . and again . . . and again.
King has written some fine -- and, at times, elegant -- novels. UNDER THE DOME does not qualify.
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★★★★★
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I'd like to put Steve King under a dome until he turns out a better story
Apt Lord of the Flies comparisons aside, there are some fundamental weaknesses that are impossible to overlook about KingFest 2009, aka Under the Dome. Beautiful, lyrical prose--and there was a good deal of that, I won't deny it--ultimately do very little to disguise the elemental failings of this book.
Let's get back to basics.
CHARACTERIZATION: Cardboard, at best; cartoonish for many, caricature too often. It's been a long time since King did such a poor job of making his characters real people.
Dale "Barbie" Barbara doesn't remotely ring true in my experience of Iraq vets, and I know a few. Barbie seems less creation than an idea-ation; nothing about him is fully believable. Indeed, for a LONG time, I kept thinking that we were going to discover that the Dome and its inhabitants were nothing but Barbie's nightmare. Maybe if they had been, I'd have liked the book better. Then, instead of an uninteresting, badly developed character, I'd have been dealing with an unreliable narrator.
Big Jim Rennie is, for my money, King's least interesting villain--EVER. He's just a drug dealing psychopath for no discernible reason. The heavy handed over-paint of Hypocritical Christian Republican doesn't make Rennie either more evil, or better motivated. Instead, it serves to point up that Rennie isn't a real character--he's only a caricature, plugged into the service the "people will inevitably destroy themselves" plot that King commits himself to. Rennie doesn't need real reasons for the havoc he's wreaking, because he's just the device to get the havoc committed.
Joe McClatchey, the child savior of the piece comes closest to being a real character--though his incidental pre-pubescent fantasizing about Norrie kissing him at wholly inappropriate moments gets old in a hurry.
Julia Shumway is a completely incompetent boob of a woman, despite King's best efforts to make her seem like an intelligent East Coast Liberal Woman of Democratic Extraction. Seriously--if she were all that smart, she would have been smart enough to have outmaneuvered Rennie and his minions MOST of the time. The fact that she's so stupid that she doesn't foresee the burning of the newspaper, much less put any kind of plan to forestall it in place--Julia is just bone stupid.
Frankly, everyone was bone stupid. NO WAIT--there was that one kid, there at the end, who dragged his grandfather's oxygen tanks to the potato bin. That kid had about a half a clue. But he seems to have been the ONLY one.
PLOT: Pedestrian, predictable and to be honest, PLODDING.
This book is a SOLID chunk of paper. If only the story were as solid as the physicality of the book, this would be a better review. Sadly, the plot is as recycled as the paper the book appears to be printed on.
"The Aliens Did It" is the sci-fi/horror variant of The Butler. Unfortunately, Mr. King has blamed The Aliens before in his work, and done so more effectively--although it's not by ANY means one of his more effective deus ex machina. And the Deo (or should I call it the Mimsy?) running this particular Machina is just silly. At least as silly as the tommyknockers, IMNSHO, and maybe as silly as Duddits. In any case, it's not remotely successful, unless you're willing to count just being able to exit the plot/book as an accomplishment--which I don't.
"Town Goes Fascist Under Influence of Bully" has been the basic plot of too many Lifetime Movies of The Week to generate any suspense. We all know this story, (Patrick Swayze usually played the Good Outsider) and King does nothing to change up the notes. Even the folding in of He Who Murders Slutty Girls as a device to frame the `protagonist' doesn't generate anything but disgust--though as a migraine sufferer, I certainly sympathize with the need to kill someone when they irritate you in the throes of a headache. If that piece of plotting had been left at that, Junior might have had a shot at a personality. As it stands, he's a dimestore Ted Bundy whose murder spree adds nothing to the plot.
Worst of all, this mishmash drags out forever--and in the final analysis, it's ultimately unforgivable where the plot's concerned. This could have been a 100 page novella, and hit all the same notes, and done it far more effectively. In fact, I think King has DONE it in 100 pages more effectively, hasn't he?
THE FINAL INSULT: LACK OF IMAGINATION
Why, WHY does everybody in this stupid town KEEP DRIVING AROUND???? BURNING THEIR GENERATORS???? Seriously, even if an idiot like Jim Rennie were in charge of some little town that got trapped under a `dome', SOMEONE would be bringing up the fact that there's a limited amount of oxygen under there! Not in THIS book, though--even though there's a specific discussion about particulates, etc. outside the main action. Even the stupid newspaper editor, who supposedly understands that `nothing' is getting in or out of the Dome, keeps running her stupid copy machine. I wanted to smother them all.
Why, why, WHY does not ONE person suggest taking any kind of INVENTORY? Not of food, not of gas, not of medical supplies, not even a census of people! Good lord, just the OFFICE I work for does an inventory of that kind of stuff if there's a particularly bad winter storm forecast, and Lord knows, our boss isn't Albert Einstein. Rennie would have been a much more believable villain if he'd involved everyone in an inventory, and then used the results to further his takeover.
And most aggravating of all, WHERE ARE THE SENSIBLE PEOPLE? Under the Dome posits a small town where ONE SOLITARY PERSON has either any common sense, common decency, or spine and when King kills him off, everyone else is either so venal that they immediately jump on the Bully Bandwagon, or they blindly knuckle under to the bullies, until they get "pushed too far." Not one character--including the supposed protagonists--just flat stands up and says, "People, we are in trouble. Maybe we need to sit down and think things through for 5 minutes before we go off half cocked."
Under the Dome had the potential to be about dealing with isolation, scarcity of resource, a community under extraordinary pressures, etc. and how the people/characters chose to deal with adverse circumstances and their own human nature. Certainly, there's a place for darkness in that story. Unfortunately, instead of telling that story, SK has tossed together a sad amalgam of stories told before, badly caricatured stock types and rabbit out of a hat solutions. Fans? ARE YOU SERIOUS??? FANS!?!?!?!
I've rarely been more infuriated by a failed novel. FANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The Decline and Fall of Stephen King [revised]
The early novels of Stephen King were characterized by: (1) skillful language; (2) gradual transmutation of the ordinary into the extraordinary; and (3) interesting characters, richly drawn. It's these three things that made them so much better than other genre novels.
By way of example, consider the language in this passage from Salem's Lot, when Ben first sees Sue:
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What was left was a scattering of mothers with infants, a few old men sitting by the war memorial, and this girl sitting in the dappled shade of a gnarled old elm.
She looked up and saw him. An expression of startlement crossed her face. She looked down at her book; looked up at him again and started to rise; almost thought better of it; did rise; sat down again.
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Each word is chosen carefully; syntax and sound interfused with sense. The internal alliteration in "dappled shade of a gnarled old elm" evokes the pastoral beauty; the spondees in "gnarled old elm" restrain the tempo; "gnarled" seems almost onomatopoeic for the elm. The elegant phrase "expression of startlement" captures the flickering of Sue's emotions. The rhythmic syntax of the last sentence - the diazeugma - perfectly reflects Sue's fluster. The sentence thus explains for the careful reader exactly what Sue thought of Ben, from that very first awkward glance under the "gnarled old elm."
King is not just "telling a story" here as some people seem to think. He uses each tool of language - the grammar, the syntax, the word choice, the sound - to grip the reader. Sometimes without the reader's knowing quite why, perhaps: but well-wrought passages like the above make the reader part of the scene and characters described at a deep level.
Salem's Lot was notable not only for its prose but for its pacing. For at least a hundred pages nothing spectacular happens. The reader gets to know the characters in their daily lives. There are hints, but little explicit. King's firm control of tempo - the gradualism by which he can over hundreds of page transmute a normal scene into an extraordinary one - was his trademark.
Yet Stephen King's ability to produce tautly edited, lyrical, tightly paced works like Salem's Lot would last for only a few more novels. Too soon, the sloppy literary craftsmanship pervading the culture would seep too into his work.
Perhaps the single moment that best encapsulates King's abandonment of the artistic credo of his early novels was his re-release of The Stand. The original version of The Stand opens in Hap's gas station. In that version King deftly portrays the quiet rhythms of small town life in the conversation at Hap's; then a car crash, still ordinary. The new version in contrast opens with with Campion's flight. Thus, instead of opening with the quotidian, it opens with the outlandish. Instead of meeting the main character, we meet an uninteresting side character. The aesthetic judgments driving that revision eventually led King in the succeeding years to novels less and less taut, less tightly edited, with more purposeless prose.
The trend of increasing wordiness with words selected less and less well culminates in Under the Dome. Other than its arresting concept, none of the salient virtues of the early novels is apparent.
The language is notable not for its lyricism but for its profanity. (Concededly, even at his laziest, King can craft an English sentence better than the vast majority of modern authors, but too much profanity is too much to take.).
The pacing is, like in the revised The Stand, simplistic. Within the first few pages there is already a pointless killing of an animal. More gore quickly follows. There is no build-up or motivation, and because we do not know the characters it's unpleasant to read.
Gore and profanity: laudable as these may be, when there's too much of either all at once it gives me a headache.
Perhaps we cannot blame King. The deterioration of King's books has done nothing more than reflect the deterioration of popular literature generally in the last few decades. Even in Salem's Lot, when Ben first visits he is treated as a virtual celebrity for reasons that seem quaint nowadays - he was an author.
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Stephen King Takes us Under the Dome
Warning: There are some spoilers in this review. If you continue to read, you may feel some important plot twists are given away. That having been said . . .
I just finished the new novel, Under the Dome, by Stephen King, and I enjoyed it, overall. Even though it ended not with a bang, but a whimper, and was ultimately disappointing, just the process of reading (or, as in this case, listening to) a King novel can be most enjoyable.
I say that ahead of time, because it's going to sound like I'm being very critical of Stephen King here, and I am, but I'd still say that, if you like Stephen King, the book is definitely worth the read. It's a long novel full of Stephen King's rich prose, and that in itself is worth the price of admission.
There were several problems for me, however. The primary problem was the nature of the dome itself, and the final resolution of the problem. It made absolutely no sense, not even in the context of the story, and was ultimately unsatisfying. Unlike the Superflu of The Stand, it made no sense. It might have been better if he had handled it the way he had with From a Buick 8--clearly, it was an alien device, had something to do with playing with humans, but really no explanation.
A transplanted defense shield from an alternate reality or the future would have made more sense, and some sort of determination made about when the shield would expire working against the ambitions of the bad guys would have made for a more engaging story. And the resolution to the problem wouldn't have been any worse. As it is, the actual resolution--spoiler alert!--that the resident "Republican to the Core" newspaper editor begs some alien intelligence to let them go, and then it does, is one of those "Huh?" moments that could disappoint the Constant Reader who slogs all the way to the end.
The other thing that is ultimately unsatisfying is the end of the Machiavellian, seemingly unstoppable bad guy. Big Jim Rennie, after persisting with Jason Voorhees-like tenacity, bumbles himself to death and dies of a heart attack. King might as well have written, "Then the bad guy falls down and dies. The end."
After all the build up, the pages and pages of Big Jim's hypocritical justifications and tirades and excuses and murderous escapades, not to mention his general, malevolent indulgence and nurturing of man's inhumanity to man, he just dies. Oops.
Which brings me to the other thing. King has given us all these characters before, only in better, less-tedious forms. He has also give us his politics in much richer, more thoughtful form: the left-leaning politics are more overblown, and work more actively against the story, than in most of his previous works.
All the bad guys, and the just-badly-stupid guys who help to enable to bad guys, are Christians. The drug lords ruining the main countryside with crystal meth? The Born Again Christian bad guy, Big Jim Rennie, and the pastor Lester Coggins. The only good preacher from the good, reasonable church? She doesn't believe in God! The one good Republican, editor of the local paper, The Democrat? She shows no signs of actually being conservative to, you know, make her more likable, and to what degree she might have some secret conservative leanings, she implies that recent circumstances have helped her "learn and grow", like John McCain or Olympia Snow or Arlen Spector. Or maybe Colin Powell.
There are lots of military guys in the novel, and they are generally treated respectfully, although the few that express any sort of political opinion show that they, too, reflect King's left-leaning political views. And Lieutenant Dale Barbara, the ostensible hero of the piece, is haunted by his memories of his troops randomly beating and shooting innocent Iraqis in Falujah, with an implication that that was pretty much business as usual with the American military in Iraq . . . so, I suppose, what the King giveth, the King taketh away.
One could be forgiven for thinking, after reading Under the Dome, that the lesson to be drawn is that conservative politics and Christian fundamentalism are married at the hip, and that the two naturally lead to drug dealing, drug addiction, gang rape, police brutality, violent murder, insanity, and eventually the death of two thousand people in a horrific firestorm. None of the bad guys in this book have any political opinions that lean leftwards. None of them are angry about the environment or justify a murder they commit because of their opposition to the war in Iraq. It might be interesting if King--a very good writer when he challenges himself--tried to write a Michael Crichton style novel, like State of Fear, which--to be fair--showed about the same nuance and subtlety in it's characterizations of environmentalists that King does in Under the Dome regarding conservative Christians.
The other thing that stuck in my craw--other than all the Christians being evil drug-addicts and murderers, and the numerous plot threads that never went anywhere--is his consistently low opinion of humanity. Jim Rennie was able to easily manipulate the town into a violent, bloody riot at the grocery store. Okay. I can go with that. History is full of mobs behaving badly. But almost every person, except for our few heroes, follow the worst possible motives. Almost no one seems to really come to their senses later on. All the new recruits for the police force are all automatically bad actors, and like to beat folks up and rape the women. And almost all do so without any apparent concern for the idea that (a) the victimized might seek revenge or (b) the dome, only a few days old, may not be a permanent fixture of life.
And, after the dome comes down, it takes four days for civilization to essentially disintegrate, and a week before almost everyone is burned alive. I realize fiction often operates on a compressed time scale, but, really?
The other thing that bugs me that, as an ex-military guy, Dale Barbara should have been a little more Jason Bourne and a little less Ghandi, more of the time. If you're going to completely blow believability, the hero should, in places, kick some serious butt.
And, of course, as is typical with King, most of the people you root for end up dead. Not a bad strategy, and it worked well in The Stand--who wanted to see Nick Andros bite it, or any of the good guys? But it just worked. And, I do confess, the largely apolitical evil of the bad guys in The Stand made for a more inclusive, more expansive saga than the knee-bent, Jesus-praising bad guys with the word "Republican" tattooed on their fat, sweating, pro-capitalist, tax-cutting, budget-minded foreheads that populate Under the Dome.
I could go on about how tediously repetitive the Crazy Christian is in King's work, but I won't. They've popped up in King's work since the beginning. But I only remember one of them in Cell. I don't think there was even one in Duma Key. There was a fairly dominant one in The Mist, some various crazy religious people in Storm of the Century, and numerous other novels and short stories. But I don't remember them being so many and so vocal. I mean, wow. It got exhausting. I guess if you hate, or are at least deeply suspicious of, anybody with a profound religious faith, you'll like it, and the more the better. It got tiresome for me
Ah, well. Uncle Stevie gotta eat. Hopefully, he's got the two-dimensional characterizations of stupid, evil Christians out of his system and can come up with something a little more compelling, along the lines of Duma Key (which I really enjoyed) or Bag of Bones, which was even better.
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King rewrites his own book again
I've read a lot of Stephen King. I was a big fan when I was in my teenage years. The Stand and The Long Walk are among his best. Under The Dome is sadly one of his worst. It was a book which started as an idea for a project called "The Cannibals" in 1976. He never finished it. I was kind of disappointed, there are no cannibals in Under The Dome.
The book is colossal at more than 1000 pages. This isn't anything new for King fans as many of his books are more than 700 pages. It was over 1000 pages and was one of King's better books (although the ending was disappointing).
Under The Dome should not have been 1000 pages. It should have been maybe 300 pages tops. The story meanders and meanders and nothing really happens of interest.
The characters are completely dull, lifeless, one dimensional. They're created with a stroke of the pen and quickly start dying off. I never cared for them so it really wasn't a big deal when they died.
The plot is another King rehash. A combination of much of his weaker work with a dash of The Stand here and there. It's part Tommyknockers (his worst book IMO), partly Dreamcatcher (also awful) and partly Needful Things (mediocre at best).
The book is also an anti-bush polemic. I'm not a Bush fan but this is a little late as far as anti-Bush messages go and very thinly veiled. The main bad guys in the book are two town politicians based on George W Bush (dumb, incompetent) and Dick Cheney (power hungry, ruthless, corrupt). It's so obvious and cloying that I didn't hate these characters or feel sympathy for them. Instead of creating real characters King has just taken Bush and Cheney and inserted them in his story.
Perhaps if King had any tact for writing political allegories this would have been a better novel. Under the Dome is partly based on Lord of the Flies which King frequently mentions in his work. 'Flies' was a much better novel than this, suspenseful and gripping and no more than 200 pages. Under The Dome is 5 times as long and 5 times as bad.
I felt like I've seen this situations and characters before. King has just changed a few minor details. The dome itself is just a setup for another town which drives itself crazy. It's Needful Things, Cell, The Stand, Dreamcatcher and The Tommyknockers all over again. A few elements have been changed but the plot is basically the same.
King can be a good writer at times but he can also be a god awful writer. In this case he's god awful. This wasn't particularly original. The idea is largely ripped off from an old Twilight Zone clone. The resolution is also utterly cheesy and practically an afterthought. It's Deus Ex Machina at its worst. Of course this is a tactic frequently employed by King when he doesn't know how to write a conclusion.
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I don't know where to begin.
First, let's start with the sheer bulk of this book because I think this is where it all went wrong. Everyone repeat after me, bigger is NOT better. I read somewhere that pages in a book have to be divisible by 16 - it has something to do with how the pages are put together for binding - if not divisible by 16 you are wasting paper/money. Including the pages leading up to the start of the story, there are 1088 pages in this book and that IS divisible by 16. But I did some counting. Seventy-seven of these pages are either BLANK or have just a few words on them (these are the pages between chapters). Each chapter starts between 1/3 - 1/2 of the way down the page, so add about another 20-30 blank pages. The print is on the large side and there are 1" margins on either side of the printed material on each page, i.e., a 6" wide page has only 4" of print. Adult book publishers have a phrase for practices that make a book look longer than it seems so that customers think they are buying more then they are getting - fudgy f*#&$^%. This book contains so much fudgy f#*$&#$ that those tree-dwelling, cookie baking elves would never run out of chocolate if they could only tap into the amount of fudge in this book. The interior binding of my copy is already falling apart.
Now let's talk about the book itself. The first 65 pages are a never-ending retelling of the opening incident from multiple points of view. It reminded me of bad fan fiction - you know the type, 20 of your favorite characters get together to have sex and then the same act is described ad naseum from 20 points of view. It starts simply - a plane and a pulp truck crash into the dome. We don't need to be told on each of the next 65 pages by heaven knows how many people that a plane and a pulp truck crashed into a dome. So between the blank pages, the start-of-the-chapter pages, the margins and 65 pages of the same thing over and over again there are about 165+ unnecessary pages.
And it doesn't get any better. The map is a joke, as are the characters. There is no one to root for - not even the dogs. No one stands out. Most characters, take for instance Sammy Bushey, are merely throw-aways - they serve no purpose other than to add more unnecessary pages. Remember the bomb blast in halfway through The Stand that King admitted he used to get rid of a bunch of characters in one fell swoop so that the story could re-focus? A bomb blast somewhere around page 558 would have been nice. And let's not forget the plot. A line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind. "On second thought, let's not go there. Tis a silly place."
There is no horror here. No boogeyman. No monster under the bed. No Randall Flagg. And when a monster tries to rear its head about 30 some pages before the end, it's almost laughable. As King pointed out in Danse Macabre, the monster isn't scary when you see the zipper running down its back. This is nothing here but page after page of people behaving irrationally or badly. It reminded me of "Black House" - page after page of violence and depraved acts that don't serve to further the plot.
I don't understand the tangent Mr. King has been on lately. The last books that he wrote that still scare me today are It and Pet Cemetary back from the 1980s. I wish he would go back to being the Master of Horror as opposed to the Master of People Behaving Badly because people behaving badly are so commonplace they just aren't scary.
