Get under it: Stephen King's 900-page Under the Dome in five days
The only way you can finish a 900-page book in this amount of time is with the divine aid of the Holy Trinity.
holidays from work
spouse stays at work (so as not to distract you)
book must be freaking awesome
This happy set of circumstances allowed me to arise from the couch On the Fifth Day cramped and red-eyed, but with a glad heart.
Yerp. It’s big.
The book is about a giant clear dome that slams down, without warning, one fine day over the entirety of a small town in Maine, King's home town. It tracks the town's various inhabitants, who are largely under the thumb of a local politician, and observes how they deal with the sudden imprisonment. Poorly, it turns out - spectacularly poorly. And let's not forget this is America, so they all have guns.
Chaos unfolds, with an outnumbered band of sane citizens trying to protect themselves and their families as they hope for rescue. But as a baffled US Government runs out of options, they must look inside their own hearts and minds for the answer.
Stephen King has said he had the idea for this book as a young writer but it was essentially too complex, too big, too difficult to write. So he kept it in the back of his mind until he was the kind of writer who could afford to get a researcher to figure out all the scientific ins and outs of what would happen if a giant dome cut off a town from the outside world.
The result is rigorous, fascinating sci-fi with delicious flourishes of the kind of horror only Stephen King can provide (remember the closing scene of Pet Sematary, anyone? Or the opening scene of IT?)
The cast of characters is truly enormous and no amount of commissioned research can help King there - it's his skill as a novelist, honed over many years, that lets him unfold these simultaneous storylines with dexterity and relentless tension.
This is the most exciting book I've read in ages; essentially, after I got out of the Dome, I wanted back in.That's why I watched the TV series. Well, two episodes of it. In fact, I was so into this story I began watching the TV adaptation before I had even finished the print version.
It may be that I am being overly judgmental because I was fresh from the book. After all, King and Steven Spielberg are both involved in the production. It should be good. But I stopped after Episode Two. It just doesn't get the job done. I wouldn't bother, if I were you.
Just get under the real thing! If you've never read King before I there's no time like the present. Don't be put off if you don't like genre fiction (in which case you're an idiot anyway). The best genre fiction transcends genre, and this gargantuan tale of power, corruption and compassion is a gift from a master storyteller at the top of his game.