Stephen King's New Book

[Fin]

...Is it worth reading?

It is called 'The Dome' and I saw it on the shelf in a store I was being rushed around in by my significant other and so I never got chance to decide I wanted to buy it or not. Apparently it is "Epic on the scale of the stand" which is pretty high praise in my opinion, so anyone here read it, would you recommend it?

Please label all spoilers.

[raitalin]

Its actually called "Under the Dome" and I just finished it, and it is good, but certainly not on the level of The Stand or any of his other top-tier work.

It does do what SK does best, large casts of interesting, believable characters. Unfortunately there may be a few too many, so only a few really get the treatment to make you fully empathize with them.

The premise is good, and largely leads to the consequences you'd expect, but the pace at which things happen make things a little more grim than it seems like they should be. He says he tried to keep things moving quickly, and he does, but at such a fast pace it starts to push on believability.

The theme is a bit heavy-handed and predictable, but is on par with a lot of sci-fi works, and this is about as lose to the genre as King has gotten successfully (Dreamcatcher was awful).

The science as a bit suspect, which is par for the course for King, and in many instances simply leans towards Hollywood science. Cuts out the middle man for the nearly inevitable screen adaptation, and I think a well-done mini-series will be a better media for the story.

All in all, I'd say its very entertaining, and shows off some of King's strengths, but certainly isn't as good as works like The Stand, Misery, or things related to the Dark Tower.

EDIT: Yea! I just became an Orc!

[Tiktakkat]

It is very good except for two things:
1. King's unfortunate decision to engage in gratuitous political hackery
2. The denoument
I have to wonder if the two are related, and King found himself unable to construct a satisfactory ending amidst the commentary he had structured.
The other 95+% of the book is quite good if you can tune out the first and be satisfied with the lack of an ending.