Book Reports

I finished another book!!  It's been ages since I read a Stephen King novel too.  Both my sister and a friend liked this book, and I thought with the mini-serires coming up that looked pretty good (keep reading for more on that) now was the time to read it.

Under the Dome: by Stephen King

Basically, this book is about small town in Maine that suddenly gets surrounded by an invisible force field cutting them off from the outside world.  I told Bill I was reading it, and he said, "Isn't that the plot of The Simpsons movie?"  Why yes, yes it is, but I decided to read it anyway.

First off, this is quite a long book, but it reads really fast; so don't get turned off by that.  It's also very well-written (I actually broke out my Kindle dictionary quite a bit while reading it), and is a really quite interesting concept.  On the surface it's about the town cut off from the rest of the world, but in reality it's really about power struggles and how people react in extraordinary circumstances.

In general, I really liked the book, but there were a few things that I didn't like.  First, there are some really uncomfortable passages to read - let's just say quite a bit of violence happens under the dome.  Secondly, the timeline seemed a bit unbelievable.  The rate in which bad things start happening was so quick that I was constantly double checking the dates.  (Okay, the dome came down on Saturday, there's now this many people dead, and wait - it's only Monday!!)  The characters do address this quite a bit in the book - just as bewildered by it as me apparently.  Finally, there are so many characters that I sometimes got confused or couldn't remember who people were.  Although, Stephen King does provide a nice little town map and list of characters in the beginning to help with it all.

All in all though, I definately recommend it.

Now, for the bummer part, I thought the television adaptation was a mini-series, but it's actually a new weekly series!!  I was so disappointed.  I was intrigued thinking it was a one and done movie, but I don't want to add another weekly show to my roster.  Plus, I don't know how they could keep the momentum of the story going week after week, season after season - it's just people stuck in a dome after all.  I'm thinking I am not going to watch it, but if you do, let me know how you like it.