Under the Dome

So that took forever.

I began reading Under the Dome back in May, and with one lone exception it has been the only thing I've been reading all summer long. Now, the book is over a thousand pages long, so in some ways the three-month slog through it is defensible and justifiable. On the other hand, last year between May and July I read twelve books totaling around six thousand pages. Granted, those books were not this book and that summer was not this summer and maybe this isn't a fair comparison to make at all, but it's tough not to look at those two summers drastically different outcomes and not pin it largely on a complete lack of interest in Under the Dome. Yet, already I feel I'm being unfair toward Stephen King once again on this blog, and I haven't even levied any specific criticisms at the book yet.

I don't want to be the anti-Stephen King guy. My literary tastes aren't all that refined, and I feel like the worst kind of book snob with these underwhelmed reactions to works of his that were beloved - or at least be-liked? - by others here on the blog. But here I am, through yet another Stephen King story, just not as impressed as I want to be.

The funny thing is, this wasn't even a bad book. It had its flaws, sure, but so do most thousand-page sagas. And it's not like this one was preceded by a lofty reputation; its ending is widely reviled and the new CBS show based on it has been terrible. Still, I get the sense that this was a real page-turner for most people, and that readers by and large were excited to find out what happened next to the little town of Chester's Mill. This just wasn't the case for me. For three months I've been pushing through this one, and only briefly did I consider it a page turner.

For the sake of being positive, let me highlight the three instances where reading the book was a genuine pleasure and not a chore. Light spoilers, going forward. First, I plowed through the first hundred-plus pages in one sitting. These pages laid the foundation for the book ahead, and introduced the central premise of the book - a giant dome appears out of thin air one day and traps a small town - before even introducing any principal characters. Planes crash, limbs are severed, and there are car accidents aplenty. All of this was gruesome and even fairly repetitive, but it made for such easy reading. One thing Stephen King does about as well as any author I've read is making horrible things happen almost spontaneously. Chaos, from nowhere. Reading about the dome's appearance and the initial reactions to it wasn't thought-provoking by any stretch, but it was good, simple, page-turning fun.

Second, there was a chunk of maybe fifty to a hundred pages in the middle somewhere that described a supermarket riot and a few events going on around town in parallel. This felt pitch perfect to me. A crowd gathers, some overzealous policemen let too much power go to their heads, a mob breaks out, and before long some people are critically wounded and the town's spirit has been broken and martial law becomes the new standard. Meanwhile while no one is watching, the book's antagonist puts his chess pieces in place, so to speak - a murder here, a framing there - to facilitate a coup d'état of sorts. And way off in the background, three teenagers explore the woods looking for the source of the dome's power, and wind up making some pretty substantial discoveries. Here, more than anywhere else in the book, it really felt like Stephen King knew what he was doing. Everything felt connected throughout this section of the book. Once again, I think it comes down to King's mastery of chaotic upheaval. You knew things at the supermarket wouldn't turn out well long before the civil unrest began. Of course, this is probably because King abruptly said things would go bad in that deadpan foreshadowing way he has, but it was an entertaining and interesting segment of the book nonetheless.

And lastly, I was glued to the pages when - and I'm only now noticing this pattern of being attracted to King's flare for chaos - the book ends with a climactic firefight and ensuing meth lab explosion that incinerates most of the town and fills the local sky with poisonous gas. The book has plodded along now for over nine hundred pages and three months, only occasionally being a "page turner," and suddenly everyone dies! There are twenty-eight survivors in a town of two thousand. Heavy! And just as our final group of survivors is choking down oxygen and barely clinging to life, the town newspaper editor communicated telepathically with a teenage alien girl and the dome goes away because hey it's Stephen King and it's time to end the story and why not do it in the worst way possible?

Honestly, the "aliens did it!" ending didn't even bother me very much. This was a book about normal people put in an abnormal situation and "how did it happen?" was never nearly as interesting a question as "how did they respond?" King once said in an interview something like, "My books have endings for the same reason we all wear pants; it's just the way people do things," pretty much tacitly admitting that he's terrible at coming up with satisfying conclusions to his story. And yeah, this was a real stinker of an ending. But I'm not even as disappointed by the supernatural out-of-left-field explanation about the dome's origins as I am by the abrupt killing off of 99% of the town's population. I mean, I was shocked when it happened, and I kind of loved how shocked I was, but it came after hundreds and hundreds of pages of what I found to be pure tedium. I suppose my biggest and simplest complaint about the book was that there wasn't nearly enough action, or perhaps more specifically that the action was lumped into a few huge moments separated by all sorts of superfluous chapters where nothing substantial happened. There were a dozen chapters in this book told from the point of view of dogs. Dogs!

So that's my takeaway, I guess, and it's ver much become my default takeaway to Stephen King fiction: great ideas and great set pieces buried under too much banality. I need a break from this guy if I'm ever going to enjoy reading him. That means it'll probably be a while before I pick up The Dark Tower III, but hey - I'd rather be good and ready for what's allegedly the best book in that series than try to force my way into it, and then, reluctantly, through it. We'll see!