Under the Dome: A Novel by Stephen King (EPUB)

Description

Don’t miss the “harrowing” (The Washington Post) #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from master storyteller Stephen King that inspired the hit television series, following the apocalyptic scenario of a town cut off from the rest of the world.On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Let me start by saying that I’ve been a King fan from the beginning. But, I strayed to Dean Koontz (a hellava storyteller!) when King got weird toward the end of the 90’s. Duma Key made me hopeful, although it wasn’t King at his best. It was almost like he had ran out of ideas and was stringing us along with the short stories and the novellas. I had given up until 11/22/63. And, let’s face it folks… the “KING” had never ran out of ideas, he was just holding back! I was back in the saddle with 11/22/63 and everything else he has written since then and it’s my opinion that his work has gotten so much better with age. I never fail to be amazed that his work can seize me with fear and hope and disgust and rapture ALL AT THE SAME TIME! So, how did I manage to miss Under the Dome until now? This book popped up in my recommendations. I must have been on the outs with the Big Kahuna or under a rock when it was released. Got it in the mail on Monday. Started it during my lunch hour on Tuesday. Finished it on Saturday. It’s 1074 pages. That’s 1074 pages of Stephen King, folks. I had to put my life into limbo to get to the end of this novel. Hear me when I say it spun my world into a state of suspension! My family had to eat cereal, the laundry piled up, and the bed barely got slept in. I basically only showered, droned through work and rushed home to get back to this book. I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! It’s The Stand meets Needful Things meets Tommyknockers meets Survivor. The basic concept is that an invisible force field claps down over a small New England town and seals them off from the rest of the world. But, throw in a megalomaniac and retired war-hero who begin trying to save the town in their own special way and what you get is King’s magic. The characters you love become the characters you hate. What seems impossible becomes reality in the pages of the book and then the story begins to parallel with things that are happening in our real world. Then it’s 3am and you’re not sure who you hate in the book anymore because you see a little of yourself in the vilest villain King creates. But, you know one thing for sure… you can’t put that book down because you’re going to see where the next twist takes you!

⭐The story is entertaining though much of this book and the voice performance is really great (baaaarbie), but Stephen Kings loony left wing bias just pops it’s ugly head up way too often. It’s distracting and takes a lot away from the story. Really? Every white male christian is an evil crack addicted psychopath Nazi rapist and every journalist is like a cherub from heaven!? Come on dude. I know this is fiction, but these old cliches are not only unbelievable, they are tre booooooring. If I knew it would have been like this I would not have purchased this audio book.

⭐I’m glad I saw the TV series before I read the book. I enjoyed the first two seasons; I could have done without the third. Still, although the TV series did convey the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Dome, the characters on the whole were much more likeable, and even “Big Jim” Rennie wasn’t quite as villainous, although he was certainly no hero, either.King himself, in the Author’s Note, admits there is quite a large cast of characters in the novel. It seemed to me he was trying to balance the bad characters with the good. Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but I believe that most people are basically good, and especially in a town the size of Chester’s Mill, with a thousand or so people, it would be hard to come up with a police force of a couple dozen people who were willing to ignore their conscience and follow Rennie’s orders. And I don’t think Rennie could have fooled so many people into trusting him. At one point, Colonel Cox mentioned that Rennie had done things like charging interest rates up to 40%, having people pay for their car two or three times over, and the like. There had to be enough people in Chester’s Mill who knew Rennie for what he was – a greedy, heartless moneygrubber – to prevent him from acquiring so much power.Another difference between the book and the TV series is Dale Barbara (“Barbie”) spends almost three-fourths of the book in jail, whereas in the TV series he is one of the main characters and in almost every scene. Except for the few times Barbie is visited in jail, he is only active in the book in the very beginning and in the end, after his friends bust him out of jail.Just because I liked the TV series better, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like the book. I did, it’s just that there were times when I got really tired of reading about mean, nasty people, or people who were drug addicts or alcoholics or otherwise had serious problems. Like, for instance, Junior’s brain tumor which caused him to act on impulses which must have already been there but he managed to control them until the tumor started eating away at his brain.Speaking of which, even though the book for the most part didn’t have the graphic violence of the TV series (I closed my eyes during the opening credits every time the Dome split the cow in half), there were plenty of descriptions of some pretty nasty stuff. Typical King, but somewhat restrained, for which I say a resounding “Thank you!”I was glad that King offered an explanation for the origin of the Dome in the book (no spoilers), something the TV series never really dealt with. It reminded me of several Twilight Zone episodes, however. So many books are written these days, it’s hard to come up with truly original ideas. The Dome as something that is done to people, as opposed to something that is done for people (which I’ve read in other science fiction books) is original. And the book doesn’t have the easy answers for problems caused by the Dome that the series did.Is the book worth reading? Definitely. But this is another case where I would advise watching the TV series first, before reading the book, simply because the series is more enjoyable – in my opinion.It appears most people categorize this as horror/supernatural fiction, because Stephen King is a horror writer. There are a few instances where there are occurrences which could be labeled supernatural: a dog hearing (and understanding) the voice of a dead person, for example. But considering the origin of the Dome and the detailed description of the effects of the explosion on the Dome, I would call this speculative fiction at the very least, if not science fiction.

⭐The influence for The Dome may well have come from the works of John Wyndham, but that’s where any similarities end. Wyndham wrote lean, intelligent stories, The Dome is neither lean or intelligent. It’s not just the sheer, exhausting, length of The Dome that is problematic. The quality of the writing and characterisation is notably poorer than in King’s earlier books, and you simply don’t care what happens as Chester’s Mill tries to make sense of being covered by a huge, invisible dome and quickly disintegrates as a community. Indeed, the first few pages of The Dome read like something that even James Herbert would have rejected, it’s that poor. King has explored small town America way better than this, so in lots of ways this feels like a mighty long and totally unnecessary addition to his list of titles. Even as a skim read, it is very hard going. Avoid.

⭐It has been a few years since I last read this, but re-reading it now and as time goes by, you start to notice more of the things that are wrong with this tale. Of course, we can all see inspiration for the dome of this tale coming from The Simpsons Movie, which came out the year Stephen King started to write this.There is a lot of action here as this goes from normal narration to at times panoramic narration with the author guiding us, which does work more than okay here. Set in a small town so we have what King is best at, small town characters and scenery, but here we also have the epic. As Chester’s Mill in Maine finds itself suddenly cut off from the outside world as a dome surrounds the environs so we read what happens, with deaths as the dome comes into being, and so on. This tries to then tackle corruption and politics, as well as environmental disaster along with the usual themes of the author’s works. Unfortunately, the baddie here in the town is James ‘Big Jim’ Rennie, who comes across by the end more like some pantomime villain, that you just want to boo and hiss at. Using his political office, so he has the town wrapped around his little finger and is determined to keep his grasp on it. His son James ‘Junior’ Rennie seems to be just as bad in some ways, but at least we know he has something wrong with him.We are certainly drawn in from the beginning as we read of the events that happen as the dome goes up, but this is a rather baggy affair, and long before the end you start to realise that the plot holding the whole story together is just too flimsy. We have Big Jim running affairs his own way, with his corruption and so on, with hardly anyone noticing, and we see this comes to a head, but the actual novel only takes us through about a week in the life of Chester’s Mill, where things are thus speeded up and the improbable, or the things that would happen over a much longer period become too exaggerated. On top of this we have aliens and ghosts, which do not fit in that well with the rest of the story, thus causing at times some unpleasant jarring.This book goes for a broad saga type tale, such as The Stand, but never really pulls this off, and although we do have a good build-up to the end we are let down with a fizzle, because as we all know King is not the greatest when it comes to dramatic closures. In all then this book is an okay read, indeed even a good one if you do not think about what you are reading. We all know that this was a bestseller, and millions of people have enjoyed this, and we know that it was a critique of the George W Bush administration, so it does make you wonder why people voted for Donald Trump, and in this country Boris Johnson, two people who have the moral vacuum of Big Jim.

⭐Stephen King continues his reign as one of the best storytellers around. Under the Dome is an epic story about the small town of Chester’s Mill and its inhabitants who are cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious dome.I’ve read quite a few of King’s books now and I’m always impressed by his ability to weave an engrossing story. Under the Dome is no different as it dives into the action almost immediately, introducing the town itself and the many characters. King explores how this small town and its inhabitants react to this extraordinary set of circumstances, revealing the best and worst of human nature as characters such as Barbie, Julia and Rusty attempt to hold things together whilst ‘Big’ Jim Rennie and his cronies exploit the fear and apprehension of residents for their own gain. It’s a fascinating insight into human nature.I would have given this 5* but as with other King books, it was a bit too long. This is definitely not a story that can be told in three or four hundred pages but I felt it didn’t need to be quite as long as it is. But don’t let this put you off! Under the Dome is worth the effort.

⭐I’m a big Stephen King fan so I wanted to love this, but I just hated every second. I got to 90% and decided I couldn’t be bothered to read the last bit properly so I just skimmed the last 10% as quickly as I could, and I still felt I’d wasted my time. The characters are so underdeveloped, I just found myself really not caring about any of them. Some of the dialogue is genuinely painful, it’s so cringey and unrealistic. There seemed to be a new character introduced every few chapters for no apparent reason, I’d say maybe 10% of the characters actually served a purpose in the story or helped to flesh it out, the other 90% were just pointless. The plot is ridiculous, the book is about three times longer than it needs to be… Just don’t waste your time, Stephen King has written some incredible fiction, read that instead and don’t waste your money on this drivel.

⭐I first read Under the Dome in 2010, just after it was first released. A long time fan of Stephen King, I was looking forward to getting stuck into another King epic. For me, Stephen King has the ability to make even a 1074 page book into a fast, addictive, page-turner, and Under the Dome was no exception (I read it for the first time over a weekend – yep, in two days).Since I’ve read about 300 books in between readings, my memory was pretty hazy as to the details, but I knew the major plot line – a small town in Maine is suddenly cut off from the outside world by a invisible, impenetrable dome. What follows is the story of what happens to the townspeople inside as s*** starts to get real.I was a huge fan of the opening of Under the Dome the first time, and the second time was no exception. It’s a real attention grabber – the dome falls within the first few pages, and the amount of detail in which King describes the event is so imaginative that once I started reading, I found it difficult to stop.As with many King novels, the cast of characters is huge, but there are only a few key characters – some of them average guys just trying to do the right thing and others are just plain crazy evil bastards. I love me a good baddie, and the baddies in Under the Dome are pretty despicable. Despite all the characters, I really liked how it gave me more perspectives – although I’m definitely a reader that will disregard less-than-stellar characterisation for a good plot line, so readers who need that strong character connection may not be able to forgive as readily as myself.Under the Dome sounds like it couldn’t possibly stretch to over 1000 pages – it’s a bunch of people stuck in a small area and it sounds like the problems they face could become pretty repetitive, but King finds ways to make each persons’ story unique. A pretty big deal considering the multitude of characters, but as always the amount of imagination and planning that goes into Under the Dome is pretty typical of King, and one of the reasons I enjoy reading his books so much.Perhaps my only disappointment in the book as a whole is the actual reason behind the dome and the ending. It’s kinda cool, and unique, but it also felt in the scheme of the plot it was over and done with pretty quickly – just not as balanced as I would have liked it to be, and perhaps even no real explanation would have worked better for me.On the second reading, I’ve rated it slightly lower than my first reading, but before blogging my ratings were pretty much on gut feeling and the speed of which I read a book rather than weighing up the pros and cons, but I still really enjoyed Under the Dome, and it’s definitely one of the most memorable Stephen King books I’ve read.

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