Review of Stephen King's science fiction epic, Under the Dome

Under the DomeUnder the Dome by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finally finished Under the Dome's 880 pages. What an epic, so much death and destruction, so many arseholes - King certainly enjoys writing about corrupt fools and the fools that follow them.

The novel starts with an invisible force field suddenly enclosing a small town. It traps the local cafe cook, Barbie, an ex-Iraq veteran, as he tries to flee small-town persecution. Barbie then has to deal with the local council, headed by car dealer Jim Rennie. Rennie also happens to be a major drug manufacturer and religious psycho. In real life he would be an ideal Tea Party Candidate. Unknown to Rennie, his son, Junior, is suffering major delusions and has embarked on a murder spree. Much mayhem results.

When I first started reading Under the Dome, I was struck by the distant third person it was written in, partly because I had recently read a lot of books written in first person. The distance that King stands back is a lot like watching a movie, and it did not allow me to really get to know the characters.

But what a cast of characters, it was huge. The story is told from about twenty different character's point of view, usually corrupt arseholes or the people resisting them. The fools that followed only had brief appearances as they were usually lead over cliffs. I can't help but think that King was commenting on the real world ignorance of the American electorate.

I found the novel sagged a bit in the middle. It was foreshadowed that the main character would end up in jail. I waited and waited for this to happen. Once he was in jail, other more interesting characters took over the telling of the story.

It took an awful long time to find out who made the dome and why, but that just added to the suspense - would Barbie and his mates be stopped by Rennie and his lackeys before they have a chance to get rid of the dome.

The novel posses an underlying question, are the novel's readers guilty of the same motivations as the creators of the Dome?

There is a reasonable resolution, but most of the fun is getting there.

Under the Dome is a very enjoyable science-fiction thriller that could make a great big budget mini-series.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Jonathan Franzen's Purity.

Image
Although this blog is mainly about science fiction, I sometimes read pure literature just to see what the other side is up. Jonathon Franzen is one of my favourite non-genre authors and here is a review of Purity, which I just finished reading.   Purity is literature with a plot. The plot revolves around secrets with the two main secrets being Purity’s search for the identity of her father, and the cover-up of a murder. The novel follows four main characters: Purity, Andreas Wolf, Tom and Leila. Purity is a recent university graduate in search of journalism job. She was raised by a controlling, but loving, mother who always got her own way and would argue for hours about the most trivial matters. Andreas Wolf is modelled on Julian Assange, complete with his own version of Wikileaks. Wolf was raised in East Germany and was a reluctant escapee when the wall came down as East Germany was a seemingly perfect place to keep his secrets. Tom is the owner and editor of an invest...
Read more

Review of The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, by Richard Flanagan

Image
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is about a dying mother, Francie, and the efforts of her adult children to keep her alive, even though she wants to die. The children have lost the ability to communicate with each other, and are out to show they have the power, at least in the case of Anna and Terzo, to keep their mother alive. While Tommy, a failed artist who was looking after Francie, just acquiesces to the will of his other two siblings.  The novel is also about our dying planet, particularly from climate change, as animals go extinct We say we care, but do little to prevent the unfolding disaster. The novel is set in Tasmania while bushfires rage throughout that state and the rest of Australia.  Anna is the main protaganist, a successful architect, who rather than face her mother's pain, her crap relationship with her son, or the raging climate around her, retreats into social media. Frequently forwarding articles she has not read to her friends, showing how she avoids taki...
Read more

Review of Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Image
Kindred is a harrowing time-travel novel that is rightly acknowledged as a science-fiction classic. It is the story of a black American writer, Dana, living in 1976 with her white writer husband Kevin. They are moving into a new house when she collapses and is transported back to the America of 1815. There she meets one of her ancestors, Rufus, the white child of a slave owner. A boy who she will encounter many times over his life. She saves Rufus’ life but is still treated like a slave by the boy’s father. A special slave with medical knowledge that is useful to them, but she is still beaten and whipped when they deem that she has misbehaved. The novel very much explores what it was like to be a slave, a possession that can be used as the owner likes. It could be worked until it collapsed, beaten when it disobeyed, raped, bred and its children sold. It was not human, just a farm animal. The slaves don’t behave like farm animals as they create their own community. They look after each ...
Read more