“King is always fun to get into. Even the worst King novels are easy to get pulled into, and this one is far from the worst. In fact, one of my favorites is Needful Things. King did an awesome job of bringing a whole town to life, making each member of the town a domino on the stage, and then having a hell of a time knocking them all over. This one reminded me of that. There are lots of townies in this one, and many of them are very well written. The little relationships that are touched upon throughout the story made the book for me.
Now the concept of a dome cutting off a whole city from the outside world is an intriguing one, even if The Simpsons did it first. King treats it with a lot of earnestness and believability. My main problem was with the bad guys in the story. Big Jim Rennie and his son are such larger than life bad guys from the beginning, and they pulled me out of the drama several times in the story. I mean, it's one thing that aliens have put a dome over the city. But to have that AND a serial killer with a brain tumor AND a the man in charge of the city running the biggest meth lab in the United States, and it all became a little too much. I would've preferred to have seen some semblance of normal characters that slipped into bad guy mode as the events of the story unfolded. That's what made The Lord of the Flies such a classic, which is obviously what this story aspires to.
But still, the novel is never less than compelling. It's a fun ride that could've been something with a little more depth. ”
BenLarken wrote this review Monday, November 30 2009.
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