The first thing that I have to say about this book is that it's long. Truthfully, I think that at almost 1,100 pages, it's longer than all the other ones that I've read this year combined. With that being said, it doesn't actually feel that way. I've been told that Stephen King has gotten difficult to read with time because most of his books seem incredibly formulaic. One of my co-workers told me that he can typically guess what the next line is going to be before he actually reads it. I don't know if that's the case with Under the Dome because I would never claim to be a loyal King fan. As a matter of fact, I think I've only read two of his other novels in the past and one barely counts since it's technically a short story. Perhaps that influenced how much I enjoyed this book and perhaps it didn't. It's hard to say, but either way, I do think that it was mostly worth the effort put in to reading it.The basics of the book involve the quiet little town of Chester's Mill, Maine and the trials and tribulations of the populace within when a massive dome inexplicably drops down from the sky and cuts them off from the rest of the world. It does not take long at all for their lives to change completely when the Chief of Police is killed upon his arrival at the newly formed barrier and chaos ensues with the takeover of Big Jim Rennie, the true villain of the novel. While it closely follows the lives of many of the town's residents at one point or another, a good deal of focus is placed on Dale 'Barbie' Barbara, a former member of the United States military that was attempting to abandon the Mill after a run-in with the local gang of worthless degenerates. The problem is that it gives you enough face time with the other locals to make you ache just a little inside when another one bites the dust.
Let me promise you, there will be a lot of dust biting involved in this read. In fact, by the end of the book, the town population will have gone from several thousand to just about twenty-five. While many die in the first few hours of the dome's existence, more are murdered here and there throughout the novel. It seems that when the threat of punishment disappears, the truth of human nature becomes entirely evident. That truth? There's a little piece inside all of us that is inclined to cruelty and it seems that only the moral codes of society are holding the majority of us back from turning into heathens once again. It happened to a good portion of the town, it seems, with volunteers to join the police force that would eventually become Big Jim's personal army.
I think the death that honestly effected me the most, even if it likely wasn't meant to, was that of Carolyn 'Caro' Sturges. I don't know if it was the penchant for older men that she and I both seem to share or if it was just the fact that she seemed so purely full of hope for her future when everything around her was falling apart, but to witness her being shot in the head while protecting one of the children she had taken in was just a painful experience. She was such a minor character, but I think I saw enough of myself in her to feel like it was just unfair. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her older lover, Thurston Marshall, and the two children that she had become a temporary mother to. Then to have two of the remaining three in the makeshift family die just before the dome lifted seemed to add even more to the little tragedy. That's the only word that can truly be used to describe the majority of this novel... tragic. There just too many senseless deaths and yet it all seems fitting and makes sense. It needed to happen because this is a comment on the state of the world and there's nothing truer than the fact that too many people have been dying for nothing in the past ten years.
The only complaint that I have is that it ended too abruptly. I usually hate epilogues, but after spending over a thousand pages getting to know these characters and developing attachments, I was not satisfied with the fact that the book concluded just about three pages after the dome was finally dragged off into the sky by whatever force (the leatherheads... whomever they might be) that had placed it there in the first place. Sure, I wanted to know what happened between Barbie and Julia once they were no longer trapped together... did their relationship continue or did they go their separate ways to avoid the painful memories of what had happened while they were being played with by children from another world? More importantly, I want to know what happened to Ollie Dinsmore, the little boy who lost his brother to an accident and both his parents to suicide in the span of a week. The little boy that buried himself in the potato cellar with his grandfather's oxygen tanks and befriended the Army private from South Carolina that called him 'cow-kid'. Did he have other relatives to live with or did Private Ames take him in afterward? I think I'd like the latter better. The unquestionable love that seemed to be present between the two... the fact that Private Ames refused to leave the side of the dome when they discovered that the boy was still alive... that he wanted to be the last one there if Ollie did finally pass away... it was just one of the most touching sections of the book and the only part that came close to moving me to tears.
So, there are parts that I question and things that I would have liked to see more of, but overall, I actually did enjoy this experience. I felt a little rushed reading it since I have to turn it back in to the library by the fifth and all... but I'm not sure that more time would have necessarily changed my feelings. It was easy to absorb and follow, despite the length, and it was hard to forget what had already occurred, likely because of the intensity of the descriptions, despite the fact that I was reading another book simultaneously. Just don't read parts of it while you're eating. Some of the deaths are very vividly described and if your stomach is weaker than mine, you might be in for a little surprise.
Rating: 3.5/5
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