Goodreads Book Review - Under the Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Unless it's your first Stephen King book, you know a bit of what you're going to get before you even open the cover: small New England town, ordinary people, something weird happens, there's a struggle between good and evil... the King usual. You definitely get the usual in spades here and, as usual, King makes it work. The story starts with the appearance of the dome and keeps right on going, a slow boil that builds and builds to the end with a few little simmering flare-ups along the way. What gets me most about the book is the realism of the characters; even the bad ones have moments of goodness. Conversely, my only complaints about the book also involve characters. One complaint is that King seems to have absolutely no idea how to write young people convincingly, to the point that it's a little distracting and off-putting just how bad he is at getting how they talk to feel natural. My other character-related complaint is that there are just so many characters that it's hard to keep track of them, and a number of them are so unimportant that keeping track of them is a pointless mental exercise. Some of them go so long without appearing that I had to stop reading to remember who they were, and I'm of the opinion that anything that takes you out of the story is, y'know, bad. But even with those complaints, King is so good that the book still merits four stars. The page count is a little intimidating but again, unless it's your first King book, you know you'll be pulled right along and the numbers won't matter at all.



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