Book review: Under the Dome

Yay, book review! I have to admit that, in this new age of vlogging, I miss being able to write my reviews. You'll have to indulge my (hopefully) charmingly quaint sensibilities today.

I read -- and brace yourselves -- Under the Dome by Stephen King.

What can I say? Although I will admit that I've since moved on from the stage of my life where I thought Stephen King was the Great American Novelist (mostly based on his earlier work and the Dark Tower books), I still can't resist looking through his newest stuff. I read Duma Key last year and actually quite liked it; all his usual motifs were firmly in place, but with the addition of some refreshingly creepy elements that made it a terrific read. I still flash back to his description of seashells grinding under the main character's stilt house on the beach and shudder.

So, of course, with that expectation in mind, I went under the dome.

The basic premise is that a tiny, tiny little town way up in the middle of nowhere, in one of those little states up in the corner of the country, Maine or New Hampshire or somewhere, suddenly finds itself surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable barrier. This is discovered in a spectacularly grisly day, in true King fashion, as people on the road and unaware slam into the barrier at a few dozen miles per hour. The barrier extends up nearly forty thousand feet and closes over the town completely; planes start crashing into it on their descents into Logan Airport in Boston or to the airport in Bangor.

Since the town is so small, everyone knows each other. Also because of the tininess of the community, people's peccadilloes -- and, eventually, dangerous instabilities -- are multiplied enormously, and this is only exacerbated by the sudden erection of this barrier. The military becomes aware of the situation and undertakes several means of punching through it, but fail. The world watches, stunned, as the town discovers itself completely and utterly trapped.

As the days go by, we follow an unusually -- for Stephen King, anyway -- large ensemble of characters as they cope with the difficulties associated with being cut off from the outside world in every way except visibility: They can see what's over there just fine, but there's no way to get there. The ancillary consequences of being parked under a barrier continue to mount as people burn wood to keep warm when they run out of propane and continue to drive cars and trucks around town.

There are two main groups being pitted against one another here: a loose confederation of people -- including a former soldier who finds himself back in service -- who just want to get that barrier down and get out, versus a town selectman with a decidedly fascistic bent and his creepy cadre of local criminal teens, who are deputized and put to work subduing the populace. As the novel goes on, it becomes something far stranger, as the local meth-lab chef gets involved in a surprising way, and people begin to die.

There's plenty of homicide involved -- mostly committed by people you wouldn't expect -- but also suicides as people slowly begin to despair of ever leaving, as well as plain old medical emergencies from the steadily-worsening air and greenhouse-effect heat under the dome. It's all done in King's style, though -- there's plenty of funny stuff stemming from the absurdities brought about by the situation, people fall in love, and young kids have their hands in saving the town ... sort of.

Truth be told, the ending isn't very happy. It's also incredibly violent, sparked by a nuclear blast set off by the military just outside the dome to no avail.

In general, it's a pretty interesting study of one man's consideration of what happens to people when they find themselves backed into a corner by something they can't come close to comprehending; some people turn to help others, while others turn to help themselves. When the latter also hold positions of power, things can get very ugly indeed, and they do so in this novel in scarily believable ways. The slope is slippery, King seems to be saying, so watch your footing. It's surprisingly free of most of his usual tropes (except things like psychic kids, one flat-out loony, and endearingly rural surnames), so it's a pretty refreshing thing to get from him.

It's not an intellectual book in any way. It's Stephen King. However, this same fact also means it's a tremendously entertaining book.