Under The Dome

I finished King's Under the Dome book last week.  It was pretty great.  Spoiler alert:  if you plan on reading it, stop reading this now!

I saw familiar King elements pulled together in this story about a small town that suddenly finds itself trapped under an invisible and barely oxygem-permeable dome.  King likes to set his stuff in Maine (duh) and, as usual, had some kick-a** female characters.  Instead of drawing in "the Dark Man" who often wreaks havoc and tragedy upon unsuspecting folks, he brought in his other favorite theory . . . aliens.

As in The Stand, one of the main characters is a man who is roaming around, trying to see where he might fit.  In The Stand, it is a deaf mute who is beaten up for no good reason, and is just trying to mind his own business when he has to deal with tragedy (like most of the world dropping dead from the Superflu).  Under the Dome's guy (Dale Barbara, or "Barbie" ) used to serve in the military and didn't like what he had to do over in Iraq.  Now he is a line cook who turns down the advances of a horny waitress.  She doesn't like being shunned and tells her boyfriend that Barbie forced her sexually.  He is jumped by 4 guys in the parking lot soon after.  Barbie is on his way out of town when the dome plops itself down on the town, trapping him inside with a bunch of good people and a bunch of nut cases, some of them homocidial.  As King says ( in the interview I have included as a link), "Why do people do what they do under stress?"  Their true natures come out, that's for sure.

Turns out, the dome was placed over the town via some sort of small device by some naughty alien children.  The analogy is of kids who tear the wings off bugs just because they can.  These kids trap a bunch of people just for the heck of it.  Meanwhile, the air is getting bad, the dome is getting filthy from built-up toxins, maniacs are trying to run the town, the local Meth operation is about to go kaboom and people are just trying to survive it all.  Very few of them do.

The book was huge and awesome.  I like it when there's a whole bunch of characters and you just have to keep reading to see what's going to happen next. 

Awhile ago, I requested the audio version through the library.  I am still on the waiting list and debated cancelling it because I know the story now and my commute is going to be non-existent due to the summer break, but you know what?  It was good enough to put on my ipod and listen to the story unfold again. 

Here's a link to a 4-minute author interview:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/multimedia?video=46697674001