A Review of Under the Dome: A Novel by Stephen King

Under the Dome, Stephen King's latest novel, is one of his longest since he wrote The Stand over 30 years ago. With a page count that is just over a thousand pages, some readers may find a text of this size a little intimidating, but King keeps the action moving along at a fast pace. If you enjoyed The Stand, then you will likely attach yourself to Under the Dome for week or two of late night reading. I certainly did, and it took me just under two weeks to finish reading the novel.

The story unfolds quickly with the town of Chester's Mill, Maine being cut-off from the rest of the world by an invisible dome that extends deep into the earth, and all the way up to forty thousand feet. Nothing can penetrate the dome, no bombs, no lasers, no acids, or anything else the government can throw at it. Only a few puffs of air, and a faint trickle of water makes it past the barrier. On the following pages of the book, we gradually meet an ensemble of the townspeople that react to the isolation and deteriorating environmental conditions in a variety of surprising ways, some positive, and others quite negative.

The novel makes stark commentary on human behavior, something King is an expert at. Sometimes folks in Chester's Mill think they have best intentions, but their sins and failings catch up to them in the end. Factions form within the town with a good side, and a not so good side. The good team-bad team is quite similar to the approach King followed in The Stand, yet in Under the Dome it far more subtle until the end of the book. The factions gradually build throughout the novel as townspeople realize that they must choose sides.

The story makes a comparison with the deteriorating environment inside dome, to the conditions outside the dome, with our entire planet. The novel makes a broad statement that says, "If you don't watch out, the planet earth will soon end up the same way, because everyone is in the dome, our Earth." The health of our future environment depends on our actions today, whether it is a few days or decades in the future. In Under the Dome, King highlights in explosive fashion what could happen if we fail to keep that mandate.

There are a large number of characters in the novel, and King spends considerable amount of time delving into their thoughts and behaviors. King is a master at character development, whether he is presenting a broad panoramic view in a novel with multiple personalities, as he did in The Stand or Under the Dome, or if he singles out one or two characters, as he did in Misery, The Dark Half, or many of his other works.

In the author notes found at the back cover of Under the Dome, King mentioned that the original length of the novel was longer, and that it was pared down some by his editor. In the notes, King stated that the paring down was needed, because the story bogged down at a few points. Because some of the story seemed to have been chopped out, I noted at least one small gap in the story that involved the worsening conditions within the dome.

Throughout the first half of the book, rising temperatures are mentioned inside the dome do to heat being trapped within the dome. King mentioned several times throughout the first half of Under the Dome that temperatures were increasing with a sort of greenhouse effect going on because the dome was trapping incoming solar radiation. I got a sense that the ending was going to lead something that had to do with people slowly roasting to death. In the end they did roast to death, but it was much more quickly than I would have expected.

In the second half of the novel, temperatures are all but forgotten and never mentioned again. He kept mentioning the worsening air quality, but then never broached to topic of rising temperatures again. I always think that whenever an author puts something down on paper more then once, as a reader, you get a sense that the author is building toward a theme or a climax that will involve that something. It seems he left that idea for a plot line-and changed direction mid-stream within the novel to finish if off quickly. Although the underpinnings for the eventual explosive outcome were also present throughout the work. Perhaps the page length was getting a bit long, but if it is a good story, who cares? I could see multiple endings for Under the Dome, and this may be why King kept mentioning the heat in the earlier parts of the book, to throw the reader off the trail.

In typical King fashion he went for the explosive ending. There is no cleaner way in tying up a bunch of loose ends in a novel than simply killing everyone off in the end with a giant explosion. It makes all the build up meaningless, and sometimes lets you feel a little let down, because some the people you pull for end up dead. I was not really let down by the ending, but I just thought is was just a little too quick. One redemption out of Under the Dome is that all of the bad guys die, but some of the good guys die, too. King would have it no other way.

Under the Dome ranks up there as one of the better King novels that I have read, and it ranks right up there with The Stand. Some years after The Stand was released, an unabridged version came out that was billed as and the uncut version. It is worth pondering whether some years down the road an unabridged version of Under the Dome will be released. I doubt you will see the same thing with Under the Dome. Under the Dome is set in a small town and does not cover the terrain that The Stand covered. An unabridged version of Under the Dome would only lead to more in depth character development, and that is already masterfully covered in this version of Under the Dome.

Will we see a movie based on this novel? I am predicting that the answer to this question will be a resounding YES. Under the Dome WILL eventually be made into a movie, and it will be a good one, as long as it stays true to the book.