And I suppose it's possible that an explosive ending will completely turn me around from my current "meh" thoughts about it.
If nothing else, I'm rooting for that.
Sometimes, you get what you root for.
(Caution: Spoilers ahead).
I’m talking of course about Stephen King’s “Under the Dome”, which I finished a few days ago. I’d been critical of it as I was reading it, so thought it only fair to say that it absolutely redeemed itself by the time it was over.
Yes, there were the obligatory deaths of most every character you’d been following for more than a thousand pages. However, as I tweeted with a few dozen pages to go, when reading Stephen King, don’t get too close to the kids or the dogs. It will only break your heart.
One of my criticisms was that I didn’t care about any of the people. Turns out, as they met their demise one after the other, I cared more than I realized. No doubt the weeks and weeks we’d been held hostage together (them, Under the Dome, me, compelled to finish the book) had something to do with it.
What truly salvaged the book for me was, a) what the Dome was, and b) who was behind it. ‘Course, you don’t find that out until the last few chapters. Aside from some folks in the book assuming it was extra-terrestrial, even that isn’t completely clear until you near the end.
So in a nutshell, I’d give it a seven out of ten and recommend it.
And as I assumed earlier, there are some who won't like the sometimes heavy-handed politics embedded within. But like I said, in my case he’s preaching to the choir. Nice anyway when something you’ve intuited comes true.
Random comment from Twitter:
2 comments:
I enjoyed it but was somewhat let down by the ending. Not much of an actual "confrontation"...and after 1000 pages of dealing with their "assault", you'd think there would ave been something more to the face-off.
I will say that this book holds one of the most effective villains in all of literary history. Jim Rennie, while despicable, is without a doubt one of King's strongest characters to date.
Absolutely understand, Barry. Guess I just liked the simplicity of it. And I suspect it is Rennie who is most responsible for right-wing nutjobs decrying the book.
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