Under the Dome is a novel by Stephen King.

Plot:
Chester’s Mill is a small town in Maine that is one day suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable dome. While people are still trying to grasp what happened and figure out how they could get out of their predicament, the town’s Second Selectman and unofficial leader, Big Jim Rennie, sees his chance to grab even more power. Former army Captain Dale Barbara, who gets stranded in Chester’s Mill quite by chance, tries his best to calm the situation, but things keep escalating further and further.

Under the Dome is a mammoth of a book. I like long novels, but they always have difficulties keeping the tension. In that, Under the Dome succeeds admirably and manages to keep the book engaging to the very last, even if the ending is a bit of a let-down.

The concept of the novel – of an invisible wall that is just suddenly there – is very much like Marlen Haushofer’s Die Wand. But the parallels end with the basic concept. Stephen King wrote a typical Stephen King novel: a small town in Maine. Evil just below the surface, bubbling up at the speed of light. Some good men and women basically powerless against the greed and ruthlessness of not so good men and women. Characters that come to life in a few sentences. Very clear prose.

If you’ve ever read a Stephen King novel you’ll know what I mean. Under the Dome is like the mega-version of the Stephen King essence. And that’s exactly what I read it for. There is a certain kind of familiarity to it, and yet it is different enough to keep you engaged and to not guess everything that will happen.

But more important than the plot are the characters. I just really liked them. Yes, he usually has the same few archetypes, but I always end up liking them and I did so here, so I don’t mind.

The book isn’t perfect – there is a chapter that breaks with the usual narration and starts talking to the reader which I could have done without. There is a bit written from a dog’s perspective which makes it clear that all dogs can communicate with ghosts that just felt misplaced. And as I said, the ending was a bit of a let-down. I would have ended on a much darker note. [SPOILERS] So the actual ending is that the dome is alien children playing around by catching ants aka humans and watching them burn. They can get the children to remove the dome by begging and pleading and therefore proving to them that humans have feelings. I would have let the children remove the dome randomly, without any intervention on the humans’ part, just because they grew bored. Leaving behind a world where you never know when or where the next dome descends because the children are in for another round of games… [/SPOILERS]

But in a novel of over a thousand pages, those things are peanuts and for most of the time, it was a great read. (And Jim Rennie Jr. and his fucking brain tumor was one of the scariest things ever for me.) It will be interesting to watch the show they made based on this book.

Summarizing: if you like Stephen King and long novels, this is the thing for you.