The thing about reading Stephen King is that it's like eating potato chips. Once you finish one book, you're either voracious for more, more, more, or you're burned out and don't want to read any more for a long, long time. In my case, I can never get enough. I've read pretty much every book the man has ever published. I've been reading Stephen King nearly since I've been able to read, starting with Carrie way back in 1976, shortly after I saw the movie. King's work has been a part of my life ever since. He's all pervasive in pop culture, whether it's one of the mostly shitty movies that periodically get chainsawed out of his novels and short stories, or it's his newest novel or short story collection, or even one of his non fiction pieces, he's everywhere. He's a consummate teacher, a keen observer of our culture, and, let's face it, more often than not, he's a righteously good read.
The thing about reviewing Stephen King is that he's just so huge a literary and cultural force of nature, that it's a daunting task at best, and downright terrifying at its worst. Which is, I suspect ironic in its implication. It's hard to be critical of Stephen King's work. The man is a frikkin' national treasure. It's like trying to review Chuck Yeager's flying, or the poetry of Maya Angelou. How the hell do you do that? I'll tell you how. You jump in, stop worrying about it, and just enjoy the ride. You realize that Stephen King isn't such a big deal and that he's just as full of shit as anyone else. You get on with the review.
Stephen King has written fiction and nonfiction in nearly every format imaginable. From novels and novellas to screenplays and short stories, the man rarely disappoints. With his newest full length novel, Under the Dome, King has created a new literary world that is easily more complex and deeply detailed than anything he's yet written. He paints a portrait of small town life gone horribly awry, with mad writing skills honed over more than three decades of writing some of the most amazing fiction ever created. Under the Dome is easily the best novel King has produced to date, cementing the fact that the man is still at the top of his game.
The plot of Under the Dome is quite simply summed up in a classic Hollywood pitch, twenty five words or less; a mysterious force field suddenly slams itself down over Chester's Mill, a small town in Maine, cutting it off from the outside world. Hi-jinks ensue. Unlike your typical Hollywood fare though, King's story isn't all about the dome. It just starts there. We're quickly introduced to Dale Barbara, a short order cook and a drifter, the proverbial new kid in town, who ends up being much more than he seems. He serves the role of primary protagonist, until he's taken off the playing field midway through the story. His friends ably pick up the slack though, proving that the situation isn't just a one man show. The primary villain of the piece is Big Jim Rennie, a used car salesman and the town council's second selectman. Big Jim sees the dome cutting off Chester's Mill from the rest of the world as an opportunity for greatness. He proceeds to reorganize the local police force into his personal stormtroopers "for the good of the town," of course, as he begins to make his bid for power. Jim Rennie has a few nasty secrets buried in Chester's Mill, though, including a couple of metaphorical ticking time bombs that eventually prove disastrous.
Article comments
1 - guest
Great review of the book. Can't wait to check it out!
2 - Fran
Yes, great review! As far as the people in the book, it almost sounds like an intensified Needful Things without the demonic influence... But with a terrarium effect.
Sounds like another 1000 page book of Kings' to read!
3 - Joe
What an excellent review. You've singlehandedly reinvigorated my appetite for this book. And the Gerald Kersh quote is itself worth the price of admission.
4 - Dan Traeger
Thank you all for the great comments, and special note to Joe: If No Doors, No Windows is as face-meltingly good as Eat the Dark was, you can expect to see a review shortly. It'll help salve the pain from the beating you receive when Harlan Ellison finds out that you've kiped his title. ;)
5 - Oh, please
I'm not going to write the first thing that came to mind - instead, I'll say that such unabashed adoration (on a site with many links to purchasing the author's books) is both shameful and embarrassing for someone professing being a writer and essayist. Not everything King wrote is good - and to fawn over it this badly is sad (no matter how good it may be).
6 - joe
Thanks, Dan -- I'm glad you enjoyed Eat the Dark, and I hope you'll like No Doors. I'm on my way out to LA today and I'm going to try to meet Harlan. Guess maybe I shouldn't bring up the title thing, huh?
7 - Dan Traeger
A Special Note to "Oh Please"
Please allow me to clear up a few things for you:
1) My personal blog as well as the other essays I've written for Blogcritics are easily and quite clearly accessible from several links on Blogcritics, so when I say in my bio that I am an essayist, I am professing nothing. I am stating a fact!
2) If you don't like the product links on Blogcritics you are welcome to go troll somewhere else.
3) Writing a positive review of work from a writer that I enjoy reading is neither shameful nor embarrassing. In point of fact I state it quite clearly at the beginning of the review that I enjoy Stephen King's work. Nowhere do I say everything he's written is good.
4) What is shameful and embarrassing is posting anonymously on my comments board when you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Anyone is more than welcome to launch a straw man attack at me, but you'd better know what you're talking about, and you'd better damn sure sign your name to it.
To quote Harlan Ellison, "You do not have the right to an opinion, you have the right to an INFORMED opinion."
8 - northdakota2
do you know if the limited collection on sale is signed by stephen king?
9 - Dan Traeger
I believe you're talking about the Collector's Set which contains endpapers and buckets of illustrations by the excellent artist Matthew Diffee. There will be a signed edition for $200 as well as an unsigned edition of the same set for $75. All of these editions go on sale at the same time as the regular hardback on November 10th. If you're seeing it for sale on websites it's probably a pre-order.
10 - Cenk
Oh Please; you sound like a disillusioned Dean Koontz fan...You are trying to prove a point to yourself (that King is not good) despite yourself?
11 - Dan Traeger
*Knuckle bumps Cenk*
12 - Eric
For Oh Please,
Stephen King is the reason I got into Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Ed McBain and others. Authors I would not have read and enjoyed if not for King's work. I suspect others feel the same.