Reading: Under The Dome

Over the holiday break I finished reading Under the Dome by Stephen King. I feel like it was a special marker of some sort because I've never read a Stephen King novel before (I'm a real reader now!). Despite his incredibly prolific works, I never actually picked one up.

This book is about what happens in a town when it is suddenly trapped inside a giant dome. The dome is impenetrable. Missiles don't crack it and air barely moves through it. At over 1000 pages long, the book gives you a lot of time to get to know the town's residents. King provides a map of the town at the beginning of the book and it was a useful reference while reading along.

It always takes me a bit to get into a book (and for a book this length, that meant it took me about 200 pages) but once I was into it I really couldn't wait to see what happened. And then the last 100 pages came about ... The ending certainly wasn't my favorite.

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HIGHLIGHT THE WHITE TEXT BELOW IF YOU WANT TO READ
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The ending was aliens! ALIENS?! I mean, ok, fine. Yes, aliens are a good way to explain the dome's existence. But the way it was flushed out was ridiculous. It did not need to be so explicitly stated. The people definitely did not have to the appeal to the aliens' "humanity" in order to be released. It was ridiculous. The book would have been better if a) the dome had just inexplicably disappeared or b) the dome DIDN'T disappear and the people in the town died or c) it turned out to be some crazy government experiment gone wrong afterall and a or b happened instead.

Aside from the last 75-100 pages, I really liked the book. I've heard from friends that Stephen King novels have a tendency to fall off the deep end at the end so maybe this was just an example of that. I also think the book could have been half as long and still as good but, again, I hear that Stephen King likes his descriptive phrases.

It's definitely worth picking up at the library if you're into Sci-Fi or mob-psychology.