Under the Dome

I have just finished this, and while it was lacking in many areas compared to King's better works, I still found it a solid novel.

Amongst the user reviews, I keep reading that King lost his edge around 1985. But that's just not true: The Eyes of the Dragon, Hearts In Atlantis, From a Buick 8, The Dark Half, The Dark Tower 2-3-4-5, Misery... just to name a few great works he has written since that year.

My question is: Do you think his work is getting weaker or not? And of course: what do you think about Under The Dome?

His political strawmen and religious stereotypes have gotten progressively worse over the years (barring The Stand and Desperation), but they're positively gratuitous in Dome. Other than that, from what I've read so far, it seems an interesting read.

King used to be dark and edgy. Now he invented anew subgenre: Dull dark and edgy.

It's the same flavor King, just more filler.

I enjoyed a lot of the book, but I feel that King either needed to cut down how much screentime Big Jim Rennie got, or give him some sort of depth or complexity. Complete Monsters get dull quickly, so elevating one to Villain Protagonist status was a bad choice, in my opinion.

I actually thought Big Jim was gonna die when Carter was gonna shoot him. Then he killed Carter, and I said "FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCK!!!"

edited 15th Apr '11 12:34:11 PM by Abracadavre

King's post-accident work has been a little less consistent, but no less enjoyable for me. I liked the seventh Dark Tower book; Cell and Lisey's Story were alright, Just After Sunset was good, and I really liked Duma Key and Under the Dome. Haven't read Full Dark, No Stars yet.

FDNS is great, it has everything you need from King, and then some!

Should I make a new thread for the tv show or just post here?

I'd say put it in Live Action TV. There are bound to be differences.

Does anyone watch the show? I would hate to launch of thread and have it just gather dust.

edited 1st Jul '13 4:33:31 PM by joeyjojo

Haven't seen the show yet, plan to, but I read the book. Too many characters and Rennie is just a bit much, but I enjoyed it.

Launched

I didn't really like this one. I finished it, of course, but it wasn't one of his best by any stretch of the imagination. Even the last book of the Dark Tower saga was better and the ending for that one is one of the worst in the whole canon of western literature since ever.

As I said on the thread for the telly prog, I saw the same thing with the Simpsons at the cinema and that stuff was both funny and dramatic. This was too relentlessly downbeat.

King is a good writer who seems to enjoy re-using the same plot elements over and over. His descriptive narration is excellent, his characters, not so much.

My viewpoint on King's writing is that he's best off when he gets away from things that go bump in the night. Frankly, when King starts to describe the supernatural itself, he's dull. Now where he excels is getting into the mind of mad characters. He'll take a crazy person, put you in the middle of their monologue, and you come away feeling like you understand the madness, and have been sullied by the contact.

As for Under the Dome, I enjoyed reading it, haven't seen the TV show. I liked the premise of the real villains being cruel alien kids although I felt the resolution was a bit Deus ex Machina in nature. I could see people breaking down as they did. They say that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and just a taste of power creates a man who would be a tyrant if he could be.