Disclaimer: I am not a professional critic nor am I a professional writer, I am an amateur at best. I do not intend to make deep analysis as to the quality of the work as I do not finish works I do not “like”. Therefore, consider this review (personal synopsis) highly biased in favor of the work’s positive points. I will attempt to make this as spoiler-free as possible.
Under the Dome catalogs a small New England town’s reaction to being put under a dome (literally), finding themselves unable to escape. There’s love, there’s hate, there’s political intrigue. And I have to say it’s quite interesting to see a town go to hell in less than a week.
Stephen King’s stand alone novels are usually fairly easy to summarize: He spends half the book telling us about the main character; something exciting/tragic/humorous happens to said character; the character reacts to this event; then it’s over. They’re obviously written with more finesse, but by and large it’s his standard sequence. Under the Dome breaks Stephen’s mold.
The first obvious change is the number of named characters; it actually required a character summary. It’s not hard to nail-down the lead, Captain Dale Barbara, but there is a tiered hierarchy of sub characters, sub-sub characters, and dogs. Yes, there’s a list of dogs. It can get somewhat confusing…especially with similar names (e.g. Rusty/Rennie/Barbie/Benny), but the same 5 or 6 “important” names come up with enough frequency to keep them fresh in your mind. I actually had to take a 3-4 week break from Under the Dome due to library loan limits and the sheer daunting length of the thing, 1074 pages, but I was able to pick up the story with minimal referencing.
Second, Under The Dome moves along at a very brisk pace. For example, if you’ll bear a mild SPOILER, the Dome is over the town in the first 20-30 pages. No more of this “page 300 excitement” crap (BTW, I loves me some KING). He’s sprinting from the start with this one, and it’s welcome. Plodding through 20 odd back-stories for 1,000 pages would be…well, let’s just say I’d rather live under the Dome.
Stephen King is an expert at moving characters through a story, and Under the Dome is a prime example of his prowess. He makes constant jumping between 20 characters interesting while the plot device, the dome, remains largely static. For, of course, the story is not about the dome. It’s about the characters & how they’re affected by the situation. That, it seems, never changes.