Under The Dome

Monday night, I finished Stephen King's latest book, Under the Dome. Now the first thing I want to say about this book is, it's heavy. I don't mean in a metaphysical sense (although it is), I mean this sucker is over 1000 pages and in hardcover, and frankly, my scrawny arms got freakin tired holding this thing up long enough to read it. Sweet Jesus Mr. King, I know I could have just waited a few months for the paperback edition, but have a little empathy for your readers! Maybe you got the money to have naked love slaves holding up your book and turning the pages for you while you eat bon bons, but holy crap, man! I got it for christmas and I thought it was a fully loaded toolkit before I opened it!

Now before I get into the review proper, I want to say two things. One is, I been reading Stephen King books since I was 7 years old (I started with Christine), and he's definitely one of the longer lasting and more famous authors out there, so this review probably doesn't mean squat to him. Two, I don't like his endings, despite the fact that he's probably the reason why I want to write books for a living.

Something I always disliked about novels was the giving away of plot points or hinting to the end. I mean it's one thing to give hidden hints, you know, little clues that you might remember later on and go "Ohhhhh, so that's what he meant... The Stars Above!" to quote Kung Pow, but Mr King just randomly throws in flashforwards for his characters. I mean, here I am, trying to get into this monster of a book, and my friggin arm is aching from the strain, and here's Mr King letting me know that this character will come to regret their action later on, and that character will never pass by this point again, and what not. I mean, what the hell, isn't the point of reading the damn book to FIND OUT what happens to the characters? Shit, if I wanted to know at the beginning what happens at the end, Mr King could have just wrote "Almost everyone Dies" in the first paragraph and I wouldn't need surgery for torn biceps trying to hold this 800 pound book up so I could read it.

Another thing just pissed me right the hell off, I mean, I know we're reading the book from a 3rd person omniscient viewpoint, so we can zoom in wherever we want and just see what's going on here and there. It's a given, and I get that we're trying to focus on the action or the major plot points so we know what's going on. But what I don't need during the zooming is Mr King describing the action like it's a handheld camera on a porn film set. At one point, he talks about zooming across town, and the READER bumps a streetlight and makes it sway. What the fuck? I'm not in the story, Mr King. If I wanted MY actions to have some effect, I'd be playing a video game, and I'd have killed all the bad guys in the beginning of the book so the good guys weren't all dead at the end. It's a jarringly annoying way of taking me right the hell out of enjoying the book and letting me know it's just old Stephen King there, tapping away at the keys and writing whatever the hell he wants. Look, Mr king, I know you're a famous rich author, but that's like seeing a boom microphone in an action shot. In a movie, it's just sloppy, but in a book, it's like you're slapping the reader across the face to get his head out of the book. If you wanted to put in a spot for a bathroom break, just put in an intermission! Slap a coupon for a mars bar in the middle of the book or something! That'll do an even better job and you won't have to spend time actually typing it out!

Other than those annoying things, I guess the book was okay. I didn't like the end, Stephen King's books have gotten more and more preachy lately, but the characters were well written if not particularly interesting. The climax was rather short, though, no epilogue, so I really don't have a clue what happened to some of my favorite characters. I guess they lived? Eh. This is definitely not something you want to read while on beach during the summer, but if you happen to be snowed in for the winter and have a week to kill (and strong biceps) you could give it a shot. It is kind of depressing, though, so the combo of the book, winter and being snowed in could make you off yourself. On the plus side, if you hold the book between the gun and your head, I don't think a bullet would make it through all the pages. I don't recommend trying this at home, though. Maybe we could line police vests with hardcover copies.