Under the Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King, 1074 pages

After a month and a half of labor, I am finally done reading this brick of a book. And I've got to say, I'm kind of glad I read it. King's tale of a rural Maine town literally cut off from the rest of the world by a transparent dome is pretty good, despite the time it took me to read it. The characters (of which there are hundreds) are all incredibly well-written, particularly town selectman Jim Rennie, a villain who makes Harry Potter's Delores Umbridge look downright cuddly. Rennie, I think, is the reason it took me so long to finish the book. As a crooked politician who believes God is on his side (no matter how many truly horrible things he does), Rennie seemed a little too real for comfort and I kept cringing at the idea of what he might do next. King didn't use paranormal or even too much of supernatural beings in this book, yet he had me so freaked out that I dreaded turning the page. That, my friends, is horror at its finest.

As a side note, in King's author's note at the end of the book, he writes that he started work on this book in 1976, got 75 pages in and gave up. Too afraid to continue, until he tried again in 2007. Reading that after slogging through the preceding story made me feel a bit better about my own experience with Under the Dome. If the author got freaked out by the enormity of the story, then I suppose it's alright that I did too. Although I must say that for my next book, I'll be turning to something considerably lighter (weight-wise, that is).