Stephen King
The Dome

I have never been a big fan of Stephen King.

Although I quite appreciated works like "The Stand" and "It," I've often found it difficult to complete the reading of tomes over a thousand pages, often too slow in development for my tastes. And if many of the King's novels are overall decent, the latest ones like "Duma Key," "Just After Sunset," and "Cell" are truly insipid, lacking in originality and not at all stimulating. 

Therefore, in light of these impressions, you might understand my long hesitation in reading King's latest effort, the monumental "The Dome," which turned out to be a splendid surprise.

The book, which as is often the case with Stephen King, is a choral novel exceeding a thousand pages, tells the story of a small town in Maine (a state where the writer lives and tends to set his novels) called Chester's Mill, over which a mysterious dome is suddenly placed, impossible to breach or bypass. Some contact with the outside world remains, but the town becomes prey to the megalomania of the second councilman Big Jim, who, with the help of his ruthless son and many violent and corrupt cops, imposes his dominion over the city. Leading the group that opposes the councilman is Dale Barbara, an ex-marine in contact with Colonel Cox, who is outside the dome and receives orders directly from the President (who is indeed Obama, as inferred from various "clues" left by the writer). Thus, the whole book revolves around the struggle between these two groups of people, easily divided into "good" and "bad."

But let's take a moment to focus on the Dome, which almost right away is reduced to a secondary phenomenon, with the explanation relegated to the final, cursory, pages of the book. The barrier that isolates Chester's Mill from the outside world is used by King as little more than a pretext for writing a splendid choral novel that demonstrates how people can change and do rash things when placed in strange and difficult situations. And although the idea of a dome over the city is overused (see The Simpsons Movie), the King handles it with care, without exaggerating, and making the sci-fi part much less important than in his previous books. 

The pace of the story is, from the very first pages, very compelling, and the characters are meticulously described in every psychological aspect, so much so that they seem almost real. Some of the protagonists, such as Andy Sanders and the Chef, who only become important towards the end of the book, are tragicomic figures beautifully created, truly worthy of works like "It."

To conclude, then, despite having a questionable ending, "The Dome" is indeed a great book, worth reading at one go (if you have the stamina for it).

Don't be intimidated by the sheer size of the volume.

Rating: 4.5