Under the Dome

What an unmitigated mess!

While I appreciate that “Under the Dome” is a response to 8 years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (in which the unqualified run the country in an opaque and corrupt way, driven by various conservative values), I do feel that a commentary on this period in American history could have been done better. Just the concept of a mysterious dome crashing down on a small town leaves all kinds of options open for a truly engrossing story. Yet, we have the town leaders acting a way they'd be unlikely to act until the dome's tenure lasted more than a day!

None of the characters were interesting, especially not the snotty head of the town newspaper, who I find it highly unlikely would address a US General the way she did when it meant getting her story out. And why were we to believe that she and Barbie would suddenly fall in love and start getting it on when the breathable air in the dome was eking away?

Frankly, by the time we learn that alien children are using the dome as a game, I just didn't care. “Under the Dome” is right down there with Stephen King's earlier “Tommyknockers,” which is the book that made me stop reading his work for years after being a die-hard fan. It wasn't until the more recent “11/22/63,” which I think is his best work, that I starting getting back into his work. So, I'm glad I listened to the audiobook version of this novel while working so that I didn't waste my time on physically reading this doorstop when I could have been reading something better.