Under The Dome – Not Worth Reading 1,074 Pages.

I have tried over and over to write a review of Stephen King’s Under The Dome that sounds intelligent and is full of subtle nuance, but my thoughts come down to one simple opinion – after over 1,000 pages, Under The Dome leaves you disappointed and feeling like King has wasted his time and yours.

A major problem is that King doesn’t seem to know exactly what kind of story he wants to tell.  The first chapter sets us up for a story about what has caused a small town to be cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible dome.  Almost immediately thereafter, the dome is relegated to a subplot and the book focuses on the a corrupt councilman and his cronies persecuting anyone he deems necessary in order to keep his stranglehold on his personal fiefdom and the growing resistance growing around a drifter who is also a former army interrogator haunted by the things he saw in Iraq.  After over 1,000 pages, though, that conflict is never brought to a satisfying conclusion and we finally discover the secret of the dome in a characteristically (for King) hurried ending.

Ok, it’s probably not fair to say that King didn’t know what kind of story he wanted to tell – it’s an exploration of the cruelty we are all capable of, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or even planet of origin.  It’s more accurate to say he didn’t seem to know how he wanted tot ell the story, or didn’t trust the story to stand on its own without shoehorning some fantastical element into the background.

The dome could have easily been attributed to a more mundane source, allowing King to focus more on the effect it had on the town and giving the two opposing forces a more satisfying confrontation and resolution, and I not only would not have minded, but likely enjoyed the investment that reading 1,074 pages requires.  Instead, King forced a fantastic, otherworldly cause into the ending and I’m left feeling that I read the whole thing for nothing.

Maybe this was one of Scott Landon’s “bools?”*

*Scott Landon was a character in King’s Lisey’s Story, another book that probably didn’t need the otherworldly element to tell its story, but at least it didn’t feel shoehorned in

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