Review - Under The Dome by Stephen King

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

Time taken to read - 7 days

Publisher - Hodder & Stoughton

Pages - 877

Blurb from Goodreads

There's a reason why Stephen King is one of the best selling writers in the world ever. He knows how to write stories that suck you in and are impossible to put down. The New York Times describes it as a 'relentless tidal pull' and Stephen King has done it time and time again with stories like The Shawshank Redemption, Misery, The Green Mile and The Stand.

In Under the Dome, he has produced another riveting masterpiece. The end of every chapter hooks you into the next, drawing you inside a psychological drama that is so rich, you don't read it, you live it.

It is the story of the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine which is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can get in and no one can get out.

The normal rules of society are suddenly changed and when food, electricity and water run short, the community begins to crumble. As a new and more sinister social order develops, Dale Barbara, Iraq veteran, teams up with a handful of intrepid citizens to fight against the corruption that is sweeping through the town and to try to discover the source of the Dome before it is too late . . .



My Review


A small town, Chester's Mill is going about its everyday business when a massive dome encases and surrounds the whole town. When everyone realizes what has happened they start to assess the damage and tend to the wounded. It isn't long before chaos follows, the rules of civilization go out the window and murder, deprivation and power come into play. How long will it last, who will survive?

I had this book for ages, since it came out, on my tbr list. I hadn't read it as it got so many mixed reviews from "it reminded me of when he did the stand", to "It was so crap I couldn't finish it". Now as you may have noticed, the The Dome has started on TV and I couldn't wait to find out what happened next so I bumped the book up. Don't read it for this guys, the only things the same is the town, dome, some of the character names and Big Jim. All other relations, connections and pretty much the story line goes in a totally different direction but anyway, I digress.

We have our first kill on page 20 so the story kicks in really quickly, the actual Dome happening is very graphic and bloody. The town descends into anarchy quite quickly to be honest and "the police" becomes a law unto itself. There are a lot of characters in this wee town and at 877 there is a lot going on, relationships, deceit, problems, skulduggery and murder. There are chunks of the book that are a bit long, some people hated that, I found it added to the atmosphere and picture of what was happening although it made for slow reading at times.

It is graphic, there is sex, murder, lies and some parts of it did have faint echoes of The Stand for me, a group of people cut off from civilization as we know it, no Government or real police within the actual town. It shows the many sides, some wonderful, strong, brave and some dark, evil and nasty sides of human beings and how quickly things can turn without social boundaries and civility. Not up in my top 10 Stephen King books but I still quite enjoyed it, I was disappointed with a few things and the ending irked me a bit but it is what you prefer as some people loved it, 3/5 for me this time.

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