Stephen King's newest book, Under the Dome, is 1074 pages long and weighs in at close to three pounds. That's a lot of book. Unfortunately, the story contained within the book is nowhere near grand enough to warrant the amount of space that it takes up.
The premise of an entire town being trapped beneath a mysterious impenetrable force field, resulting in a Lord of the Flies-esque battle of good vs. evil is an intriguing one. It captured my attention for the first 300 or so pages, until I settled into "just keep reading, gotta get to the end, maybe it'll all be worth it" mode.
King introduces the reader to a seemingly endless parade of stereotypes, each of whom serve no purpose in the story other than to die in horribly uncreative ways. There is not a single character in this novel who is even slightly believable or enjoyable. Dozens of plot lines between the characters are introduced for absolutely no reason whatsoever. ***Spoiler*** Instead of resolving anything, King creates a plot device near the end of the novel that wipes out 99% of the town's population. For an author who has been criticized for not knowing how to end a story for his entire career, the ending to Under the Dome may be his weakest to date.
And what is the cause of this mysterious dome? I'm not going to spoil that for you here, but it's really, really stupid. Alright, it's aliens. Unsupervised alien children who are playing with us the way that we play with ants under a magnifying glass.
If you want to read 1,000+ pages of Stephen King read The Stand, or It, or Salem's Lot 3 times.
1/5
Isn't this the same plotline as "The Simpsons Movie", only not entertaining?
ReplyDeletePoor Stephen King, outshined by cartoon yellow people...
Thank you for warning people off this book. I hate to think of anyone going through what I watched you go through.
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