Under the Dome by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ever wonder what it'd be like to turn your small town into a snowglobe?

I saw this Superman cartoon where Braniac turned Metropolis into a miniature, too, but this book ain't that. :) Indeed, the SF elements are strong in Under the Dome, but they don't mean much to the basic story other than the setup. It wasn't a Tommyknockers thing, either, although I was very curious to see if SK would go there.

Indeed, what we've got here is a bit of a Slaughterhouse Five thing. Insects in a dome, but naturalist style. Let's see all the insects eat each other!

Poor Maine. SK has done so much to hurt those poor people.

Or maybe it's just the meth makers and dealers. And here's the great part, I haven't seen such a kingpin since Breaking Bad, and that was AFTER this novel! :) Big Jim is one hell of an evil dude.

SK really lets his hatred of humanity out in these pages. True horror is in us, after all, and not in his monsters.

Honestly, I probably would have latched-on to this one of SK's novels much more had I been more of a lightweight in the whole growing dystopia thing. It only lasts a week for a whole town to go to hell, which I don't really have an issue with. We're all about as civilized as bellies are full, after all. The only thing I have a problem with is the bloat.

Bloat?

Yeah, sadly, there was a lot of multidimensional characters that may not have needed much rounding out. Indeed, a lot of them are nothing more for the fodder for the hell that's heading their way. :) I don't need much in the way of shadowy pasts or rounding out for any but the biggest characters. We might have saved on a good 500 pages in the novel, too. ;p

Not my favorite King novel, but it had its moments. Not too bad. Could have been a lot tighter, but it did have SK's trademark wander and a bible's worth of characters. Hillbilly bible thumpers go nuts, yo.

As an experiment, however, I think I'm on the side of the aliens in Slaughterhouse Five. :)

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