Under the Dome by Stephen King

Plot

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.

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I loved this book. Or, I should say, I loved reading it. The story itself was a little odd, but I say that for one reason and one reason only. It remind so very much of The Simpsons Movie. I tried so hard to keep that out of my head, while I was reading, but I could not keep it out entirely. More on that.

For anyone that has seen The Simpsons Movie, I think you can see where my mind was getting stuck on the movie, just by looking at the book's title...Under the Dome. I remember reading, before the book came out, that King had heard about the comparisons to the Simpsons movie. He commented that the comparisons ended at the town being placed under a mysterious dome. Nope. The comparisons go beyond that. Don't get me wrong, though. It didn't take away from the book. The similar plot points, while being very obvious, were much darker in the book. As they should be, given that this is Stephen King. And, it's not as if The Simpsons were constantly at the back of my mind, while I read. It was just occasionally that the little voice in my head would scream out "SIMPSONS!!"

The book's full of characters you love to love and characters you love to hate. On second thought, to be totally honest, I don't think it's a love to hate. It's just straight up hate. There are characters throughout the book that I found myself wishing would just die, because there was just absolutely nothing redeeming about them. I found this to be both a strong point and a weakness to the book. You hate them so much that you keep reading, just so you can get to the part where they die a horrible death. At the same time, you hate them so much that their inevitable death just does not come fast enough and, in one case, was not horrible enough.

Bottom line, this is a book to read. Maybe not if you're a Bible-Thumping Republican. Let's be honest, if you're a Bible lovin' conservative and read this book, you're probably going to want to burn it, when you're done. And, I don't mean the "Oh this book was horrible" sort of book burning. I mean in the "Fahrenheit 451/Books lead to knowledge/Harry Potter promotes the occult" sort of book burning...if you catch my drift.

~Missy