Under the Dome
Under the Dome by Stephen King; narrated by Raul Esparza
What would happen in a little Maine town if it were suddenly cut off from the outside world by an impenetrable invisible barrier, a dome stretching across the town and trapping the residents inside? Things would devolve pretty quickly, apparently. A few thoughts:
- I’ve always thought Stephen King is a good storyteller, but not a great writer. This book reinforces that perspective for me. King does an excellent job building characters you can love and characters you can loathe. He knows how to make them dance and make you seethe. People act foolishly in ways annoying and somehow realistically. But his use of language is pedestrian and unmemorable. Consider, for example, how his writing compares to James Lee Burke’s skillful use of language. That said, I liked Under the Dome quite a bit.
- One of the main plot points is the rise of the second councilman, an ambitious scumbag with a mean streak and a hypocritical view of the world. King gives him the same method of rising to power as Hitler, and just as you’re starting to notice the similarities, members of the community notice it themselves and start referring to his helpers as brown-shirts. It works well.
- King is also very good at making horrible and horrifying things happen in his tales. We don’t know exactly what will happen, but we know no one is safe from the bloodshed that weaves through his books like a snake.
- All that said, I’d like to think things wouldn’t devolve into chaos so quickly the way he suggests they might. But we saw what happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and I hate to think how long it would take people to lose their shit in my town if we got cut off. None of us would have generators, and the people per acre count is far higher, so we’d run out of supplies much more quickly. Yikes.
- Most challenging about King’s work are the ultimately malevolent and terrible causes that he eventually provides for the horrors tracking through the stories. This was true in The Regulators, in Desperation, in Dreamcatcher, and in Under the Dome. There are bad things out there in the night and we don’t have much hope against them. It’s a grim view of the world.
Raul Esparza does a good job with the book, creating creditable distinct voices for the different characters and keeping the pace reasonable. However, I listened to the first half on CD and then absent-mindedly returned it to the library without finishing it. When I was able to get it again, it was on a piece-of-shit MP3 player. The sound quality was TERRIBLE and I will encourage my library NEVER to buy any of these pieces of junk.
Under the Dome by Stephen King
What would happen in a little Maine town if it were suddenly cut off from the outside world by an impenetrable invisible barrier, a dome stretching across the town and trapping the residents inside? Things would devolve pretty quickly, apparently. A few thoughts:
· I’ve always thought Stephen King is a good storyteller, but not a great writer. This book reinforces that perspective for me. King does an excellent job building characters you can love and characters you can loathe. He knows how to make them dance and make you seethe. People act foolishly in ways annoying and somehow realistically. But his use of language is pedestrian and unmemorable. Consider, for example, how his writing compares to James Lee Burke’s skillful use of language. That said, I liked Under the Dome quite a bit.
· One of the main plot points is the rise of the second councilman, an ambitious scumbag with a mean streak and a hypocritical view of the world. King gives him the same method of rising to power as Hitler, and just as you’re starting to notice the similarities, members of the community notice it themselves and start referring to his helpers as brown-shirts. It works well.
· King is also very good at making horrible and horrifying things happen in his tales. We don’t know exactly what will happen, but we know no one is safe from the bloodshed that weaves through his books like a snake.
· All that said, I’d like to think things wouldn’t devolve into chaos so quickly the way he suggests they might. But we saw what happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and I hate to think how long it would take people to lose their shit in my town if we got cut off. None of us would have generators, and the people per acre count is far higher, so we’d run out of supplies much more quickly. Yikes.
· Most challenging about King’s work are the ultimately malevolent and terrible causes that he eventually provides for the horrors tracking through the stories. This was true in The Regulators, in Desperation, in Dreamcatcher, and in Under the Dome. There are bad things out there in the night and we don’t have much hope against them. It’s a grim view of the world.
My experience with this book was pretty mixed, as I had to listen to half of it on a piece-of-shit MP3 player from a library. The sound quality was TERRIBLE and I will encourage my library NEVER to buy any of these pieces of junk.
Under The Dome
Cloud Atlas
