Day 13: A Fiction Book

I have read a lot of Stephen King. By a lot I mean I read pretty much every novel he writes as soon as I can get my hands on it. This was the most recent one I read, and I loved it! It's a country setting, so I could easily imagine the scenes set forth, although the world I pictured looked nothing like mid-Michigan. The small town I pictured was actually the ghost town I saw in an X-Files video game. Weird. But the book was great!

I did find myself during my reading saying outloud, "Oh, I know what's going to happen," and turn out to be completely wrong. I didn't even get the ending right, even though I'm usually pretty accurate when I think I see the end coming.

The basic premise is this: small town, small town people, good guys, bad guys, all locked into their little area by a mysterious dome that has been planted over their town, isolating them from the rest of the world. There are purely good and innocent people, not-so-innocent people who turn out to be good, bad guys who are always bad, and plain evil people. There's gore and mystery, both central to any King novel, and even though I found this one to be slightly more graphic in description than his other novels, I found myself hoping Hollywood would buy the rights and make it into a movie. And not one of those crappy made-for-TV deals... A full-fledged real deal with known actors who would do justice to their respective characters.

One thing I found interesting when I read reviews of the book on Amazon.... Apparently you can't be a fan of the Dome and of The Stand. If one thinks The Stand is King's greatest novel, I guess it's not possible to love Under the Dome as much, as if it's some sort of betrayal. I, however, couldn't set this one down, even when my eyelids refused to allow me to read further, and I would argue that this was King's best effort to date.