Friday, January 15, 2010
My thoughts: Under the Dome, by Steven King
Last night, I finished Steven King's newest novel, Under the Dome. Under the Dome is a whopping 1074 pages in print and 823 pages on my nook (though when you change the page on your nook, it doesn't always change the page count, so who knows...). For comparison, the thickest Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, was 870 pages.
To preface the rest of this post, I will just say that I'm not some die-hard Steven King fan. I haven't read very many of his books, though I am familiar with his work. I've read Carrie and On Writing, and I think that's about it. Basically, this is not a review coming from someone that's going to compare it to his other writing. Just so you know. I will also say that I'm not doing this to give spoilers. I am going to write this post with general thoughts on the book and try my best not to spoil anything for anyone. If anyone leaves a comment, please do not post a spoiler.
Under the Dome is a great nook book. Considering it's massive size, when people ask me what's so great about an e-reader, I just have to reference this novel. I can't shove this book into my purse. It weighs a ton, and not to mention, it's huge. It isn't something that I could have carried around with me to read on my lunch break at work. It's just huge. Enough about the physical, though, I want to talk about the story itself.
Premise
The idea of Under the Dome is simple in concept: an invisible barrier suddenly appears that separates the town of Chester's Mill from the outside world. Initially, no one knows why it is there or where it came from or how to get rid of it. The book follows several characters throughout the story as events unfold and they try to figure out how and if they can escape from the dome.
Characters
Steven King does a great job of creating a bad guy. What I like about this book is that it's a great example of character profiling. As an aspiring writer, I think this book is a great example to look at as an example of how to create realistic characters that readers can love and hate.
I'm only going to talk about one character here, because he's the one that I thought Steven King did the best job on. This character is named Big Jim. While not a really enjoyable character and definitely not a good guy, is a wonderful creation. He is someone that you can really loathe, but Steven King also makes you wonder, is he pure evil or is he doing what he's doing because he believes it is his duty to do it? Was he a deluded God-freak who thought he was justified and doing God's work or was he cold and calculating? As a writer who struggles with characters the most, it is interesting to see how he creates people that you can imagine seeing and meeting. These characters are real enough to be real people, with back stories and families and their own phrases and speech patterns. The rich characters are probably the main meat and potatoes of the book. They move along the action in the story mainly from how they interact.
Slowness
Yes, the book does move slowly. Would you imagine a 1000+ page book to have action on every page? Though there is a lot that happens in the book, and I would say that it never was dull. And, while I won't be re-reading it anytime soon since it's so long, it is something that I would like to revisit eventually. I think a re-read would be interesting, to catch things that I may have missed before.
One of the main reasons it felt so slow to me was because of all the foreshadowing that Steven King used. Early in the book, he hints at disaster, evil things to come, fire, etc. Halfway through the book, he's still hinting. 3/4 of the way through, still hinting. It's almost agonizing, but it also makes you want to keep reading. You want to know what's going to happen. You want to know if all of the terrible things that he's hinted at will actually come true.
Death
Death in the book seems very abrupt. There is a lot of it, but it's treated with coldness. "[Insert name] died." Alright, let's keep going then.
Time
Time in the book was the strangest part. Since it's so long, it seems like it would take place over a huge amount of time. Considering everything that happens in the book, it's amazing that it only takes place over about a week's span. The characters often mention how long the dome has been there, because it seems like what has taken place would take weeks or months of being trapped under the dome, but everything seems intensely accelerated. If the characters hadn't mentioned the time, I would have completely lost track of it to the point where the days would have turned into weeks in my mind. (And yes, a lot of the death in the book feels that abrupt.)
Final Thoughts
I will say this about the book in relation to the ending. Under the Dome is not a "feel-good" book. But considering Steven King, were you really expecting that? I did enjoy the book, and as I said before, I will probably read it again when I get the chance to sit down and read it. It took me about a two weeks to read. I would recommend it to friends, but probably not to family. My mom wouldn't like it. Neither would my mother-in law or any of my other religious family members. I wouldn't necessarily say that it is explicitly "anti-religious," but from the general feeling you get from the characters and events in the book, a religious person would probably get fed-up with it. It also deals with subjects like murder, rape, and suicide, so it's not warm and fuzzy.
My final word on this book is this: It's entertaining. If the book kept my attention through 1000+ pages, it's got to be entertaining. If I'm bothering to write about it, it had to entertain me. I liked it, and that's all that matters to me. It was worth the $10 I spent on the e-book and if I didn't have an e-reader I probably would have spent the full price on it, though I don't think I would have read it as fast. That would have been a book to sit on my nightstand and read before bed. I wasn't going to cart it around with me. I think now I'm going to read a book that I've long-neglected: Dracula.
Questions? Comments? Tell me what you thought of the post and if you read the book, let me know what you thought of it. Do my thoughts match up with yours or was I just completely off in my own world?
http://arielle-writing.blogspot.com/
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