Review of "Under the Dome" by Stephen King

I recently finished this book before the new year. If you are a fan of Stephen King you will notice that his mastery of multiple POV's and building the tension is at the top of his game in this very large novel.

Some of the things that I found really interesting about this book was the dynamics of the two sides. How he built up the bad guy, not to be some superhuman monster, (a monster in a way), but one that you could understand and rationalize his thinking. Even if you don't agree with it. On the other end, he did a very good job at throwing obstacles at the main character that were each greater than the previous one.

There are even moments where King is able to make you wonder if he is going to survive the ordeal under the dome.

I think what makes this book so interesting was the way that King used the very restricting environment to explore how fragile society really is. If you take away our technology, brought us down to our basic survival instincts and let us try to figure it out. This dynamic is really what he plays with that makes for such a scary situation(reality).

A thing that I found to be a bit disturbing, and not in a good way was the ending and how it was solved. I'm not going to ruin it, but it just sort of came out left field to me. Unlike the rest of the book, which was grounded in a realistic situation, barring the mystical dome, I found it cheapens the ending a little bit.

Overall, I would rate this book up there as one of his better pieces. Not quite "The Stand" level, but I would say in the top ten of the books I have read of his.