Please give us a boxed spoiler, as detailed as you need to be. Thanks!
Basically, thanks to a giant explosion, the town’s air becomes extremely toxic and the vast majority of the town dies. Only two main bad guys – Big Jim and Carter – survive for a while in the town bomb shelter, and a few main characters right at the edge of the dome also survive, because the military is able to blow a tiny amount of fresh air through the dome to them with giant fans. Then the main characters use tires to breathe enough air to go to visit the immovable box generating the dome and one of them makes contact with the alien children tormenting them, and, fortunately, there’s only one of them around, and she convinces the alien kid that just in case humans really do have lives and minds, it should make the dome go away. So it does.
So, um, since I gave it up, one question?
Why do aliens, as in alien beings who aren’t all down with our county atlas, put the Dome on the town line? Which is irregular?
That’s never explained.
ETA: However,
it is implied that the alien children who set up the dome are basically just like human children killing ants with a magnifying glass. Maybe the alien kids are focusing on single “anthill,” so to speak, of Chester’s Mill.
I liked the book - but it wasn’t one of his best, IMHO. I am a little tired of the mean people theme, since it doesn’t really count as “escapism” as there are plenty of mean shitty people IRL. I was seriously pissed that Rennie didn’t get what he had coming. Especially after that comment to Carter about how the Bushey girl was. There are some books of SK’s that I CANNOT put down and have lost sleep and been late for work because of these. This was not one of them.
I like most of his books (except Hearts in Atlantis) and have re-read all of them. I loved From a Buick 8, it was a fun book!
Especially since the people in Chester’s Mill could see through the dome. They saw that the government was trying to help, they could communicate freely, they still had food, electricity, running water, etc. If King wanted a quick meltdown, he shouldn’t have made the dome transparent and there should have been no contact with the outside world. Under those conditions, I might go a little crazy myself.
But it wasn’t really the people of Chester’s Mill who went crazy – it was
Rennie who purposely drove them crazy, by shutting down the food and propane supply, and by making them think there was a crazed serial killing rapist in their midst.
I’m 127 people away from reading this book (I don’t like Stephen King hardcovers - too friggin’ big! I’ll buy it when it comes out in paperback.)
I finished this book just before Christmas, I thought it was better way than Liseys Story which I put down, but not as good as his older works. The weird thing is I think to enjoy this novel the way it was intended you’ll need to pick up another: Nothing to Lose: A Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. I read that one just prior to Dome not knowing that Reacher has a cameo by proxy. Not only does the protagonist share a world view with the protagonist of that series of stories, this story seems to be almost a mirror story similar to King/Bachman’s Desperation/Regulators stories. I have a hard time believing this was not intentional. I’d be interested in anyone else’s view who has read both tales.
Thanks, chorpler, for the spoiler. Now I know I won’t be reading this. Ugh.
Yep. Outside his short stories and one or two novels, King’s never been that great, but he hit his stride in the '80s and it’s been a lengthy slide downhill from there. If you’ve read any King novel, you’ve already read this one: same-old protagonist, familiar one-note villain, lame (also: recycled, nonsensical) references to his earlier works, silly deus ex machina, etc…
To his credit it’s still a readable book; it just follows a much too familiar pattern and you can probably skip two-thirds of it without missing much.
That’s your opinion, not the objective facts about King. In my opinion, King just keeps getting better and better. 
I just started reading this and am stunned at what utter shit it is. I can’t believe anyone made it past page 50, let alone enjoyed it.
I finished this a few weeks ago, and I admit that I enjoyed it. It moved very quickly, which is a plus if the book is 1000 + pages long. I thought the characters were pretty well developed.
I really didn’t like the rationale for the Dome, however. I think it could have been more cleverly handeled.
One fan defending the book said “What do you expect? He wrote it in 1976!” King would have been 19 or 20 in 1976 and yeah, the book would have been an accomplishment for him – then. Not now.
I think I might have liked it if it had been one of the first King titles I’d read, but we’ve seen him do so much better, and Dome suffers by comparison.
I think I was put off by the sheer amount of violence, especially directed at women and animals, in the first few chapters… I don’t remember that from other books of his.
Good to know it was not that good. I was planning on buying it when it came out but King and his publisher decided that they would hold back on releasing the Kindle edition for nine or so weeks. So I couldn’t buy it then and will probably not buy it at all now. I’ll probably find it as a trade in paperback at some resort in a couple of years.
I finished the book yesterday. I’m not sure why.
It started okay, but immediately started going off the rails because the characters were just not believable. The behavior of the townspeople was not believable. The behavior of the authorities was not believable. The villain was a cardboard cutout. And what really annoyed me is that King clearly has a lot of disdain for average people. Background characters behave in unbelievably stupid ways, and in ways that simply do not ring true at all.
For example (and this isn’t really a spoiler because it happens right from the start), I can’t believe that the people wouldn’t have started rationing and hoarding from almost the moment they were cut off from the outside world. And I can’t believe they would drive their cars around willy-nilly, knowing that their exhaust was going to be staying with them indefinitely, or run their generators 24/7 for very little reason. Again, they all behaved like complete idiots.
The main characters were so flat and uninteresting that I kept forgetting who they all were as I read the book.
The ‘science’ in the book was mostly ridiculous, the solutions to problems either made no sense or were so obvious that it was unbelievable that they wouldn’t have been tried already. The disasters after the dome came down didn’t strike me as being reasonable descriptions of what might really happen. Even little things bugged me, like King’s description of someone walking at normal speed into the dome - and having their nose broken, and gushers of blood spraying out. Anyone who’s ever walked into something like a closed door when they weren’t looking would know that your not going to crush your face and spray blood everywhere.
I could go on. The maddening thing about King is that he’s a good enough plotter that he keeps you reading. I was never in danger of quitting the book, but as I’d finish reading a scene I’d think “Well, that was stupid.” But by then he’d have me hooked on the next one, so I’d keep going. It’s like he was toying with me, the bastard.
And as for the whole dome thing and what was behind it… worst.plot.device.ever. And the way he tied it into an earlier story about a character was beyond ridiculous. As annoyed as I was by the book until then, when the big reveal came about what was behind the dome I would have thrown the book across the room. But since it was on my wife’s Kindle, I decided I didn’t hate it quite that much.
So there’s my review. I hated it more than $10.95, but not as much as $259.00
I finished it a few days ago. I’d recommend it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading it. On the other hand, it did have some pretty huge flaws and I completely understand why many people didn’t like it.
[SPOILER]I was a little thrown by the killing of practically the entire town, and especially the casual countdown of major characters dying near the end. By that time as a reader I was somewhat invested in these characters, it was kind of like “Oh-okay-everyone-dies-now-okay-bye”. It made me think “what was the point?” regarding all the stuff that had happened previously.
I didn’t think the ending and explanation of the dome was very satisfying, although I knew it wouldn’t be long before the end. I admit I was fully drawn into the events and people’s reactions to the dome and had a hunch early on that any attempt to explain the dome would pale in comparison. I was right. The first 80% of the book was far more satisfying than the last 20% (and thanks to King’s 1000 page book habit those percentages are easy to calculate!).
[/SPOILER]On the whole though, I enjoyed the book a lot. For the most part my disbelief was suitably suspended. Even though a bit of reflection means that the events portrayed seem unrealistic for me that reflection only occurred after I was done. The book itself was so engrossing that I took everything at face value with no issue while I was reading it. That is good enough for me when it comes to reading or movie watching for entertainment, and I found this extremely entertaining.
Gerald’s Game comes to mind.