Reviews

phenomenal book!........ until the ending which felt slapstick and way out of left field stupid which made me feel like I wasted my time reading the entire book.

We literally spent hundreds of pages surviving and trying to solve the mystery of what the dome is and why for it to be alien moth children playing dungeons and dragons. Im still mad about it years after having read it.

remjunior's review against another edition

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3.0

Over a thousand pages? Really, Stephen King? I mean, I know you LOVE to write and most of your books are pretty long, but this is a little over the top, even for a huge fan of your writing, such as myself. Overall, this is a typical King novel (and if you read a lot of Stephen King, you know what I mean). I can't think of anything GREAT about it, because it was just mediocre. I can think of what annoyed me. The characters...they were, uhm, kind of like cardboard cutouts. This isn't anything like The Stand where we actually get to know the characters and love them. By the end of the novel, I still didn't find myself caring THAT much at who lived or died. That being said, this all takes place within a week so maybe that isn't even feasible.

Anyway, a decent read but definitely not the best Stephen King novel ever written.

infinite_kay's review against another edition

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4.0

I finished reading Under the Dome about a month ago and had so many thoughts and comments that I wasn’t able to write a review that made sense. Now, the Domealong event has come and gone, and it it finally time I put fingers to keyboard to make sense of all this. I decided to do it in simplicity with general themes, rather than sharing every single thought I had when reading the book – and with 1074 pages to read, there were a lot of thoughts!

I was pleasantly surprised with my reading. I had heard comparisons of Under the Dome to The Stand, and I can see why (though The Stand remains my favorite of the two). The cast of characters is huge and King writes even the smallest ones with many layers of complexity. I’ve always thought that one of King’s strengths, as a writer, were the characters, and Under the Dome is no exception.

While I was completely taken by the characters and anxious about the story, I felt immensely let down by the ending. The book was a clear 5 stars novel until I reached the end, but the way the Dome was finally explained felt like an afterthought, like the author suddenly remembered “Hey, I should probably find an explanation for that thing”. I wanted something that would blow my mind, but it didn’t. Sigh. Also, too many dead dogs. Can’t you keep a pet alive for once, Mr. King?

What I take away the most though, and this is a constant theme is Stephen King’s work, is the nuances of good and evil depicted in the story. There are some horrible characters in there, but my reactions to them weren’t the same. For instance, there was something extremely miserable about Junior and the main reason he was acting the way he did, and while it would never excuse anything (I don’t think something this horrible could eve be excused!), I didn’t hate him as much as his father, who made his crimes with much more calculation. I also wondered; would Junior be the same, or act the same if it wasn’t for what pushed him over the edge? With a father like Big Jim, and the relationship he had with him, I tend to think that he probably would.

More interestingly, King explores different shades of good and evil not only in his characters, but also in the reader. Through all the violence, it’s easy to position ourselves as good people, thinking we would act differently; yet there was one scene where I found myself having very little sympathy for a character suffering from a very violent event (for those who read the book, I’m talking of the supermarket scene; I think you’ll know who I am hinting at here!) It really made me question myself, and my reaction to this violence. It’s easy, it seems, to cheer on violent acts when the villains are being punished, yet that was an extremely uncomfortable moment for me.

All in all, despite a very weak ending, I really enjoyed Under the Dome. Unlike its TV incarnation, it was a vivid story of humanity, of good versus evil, of deep and complex characters struggling to stay alive. I’m not sure which King novel I’ll be reading next, but I know this certainly wasn’t the last!

(on a side note, I love love love, that cover; it’s so perfect, I couldn’t imagine a better one)

annacrouse's review against another edition

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5.0

I first attempted to read this book 3 years ago and stopped around page 700 due to lack of motivation. I have since then started back at the beginning of the book and read it all the way through. I absolutely love this book, the characters and the plot pulls everything together. This is a longer read, 1000 pages, and it's definitely worth it. The pace of the book is a little slower than other books I've read, but it still keeps the reader's attention. Out of all the characters in the book, my favorite would be Barbie, Big Jim, and James O. Cox. Barbie for his intelligence and problem solving skills. Big Jim for being an interesting antagonist and seeing his thought process throughout the novel. James O. Cox for seeing his outside perspective on the dome. I'd recommend this book to anyone that likes longer novels, science-fiction, and mystery.

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