Under the Dome

Acabo esta história com alívio. Não apenas por finalmente ter vencido esta besta, mas também por conta das cenas sufocantes que precedem o final.

Fico maravilhado com a capacidade de uma pessoa conseguir construir tamanha história, com dezenas de personagens e acontecimentos emaranhados super bem descritos, envolventes e, por vezes, viscerais.

Mesmo assim, devo assumir que pra mim foi um desafio grande ir até o fim. Pessoalmente tenho extrema dificuldade em lembrar nomes - não só em leituras, mas na vida mesmo - e em uma história como essa, com zilhões de nomes, me peguei muitas e muitas vezes tentando lembrar quem era quem, o que me tirou um pouco o prazer de acompanhar esta história.

Outro ponto, foi o fato de ser muito, muito longo mesmo. Achei o ritmo muito arrastado e me peguei forçando para seguir, principalmente no final, diferente de "A Zona Morta", que achei na medida perfeita.

Mesmo com estas dificuldades, amei o pano de fundo da história, gostei da maioria dos personagens - pontos extras para Big Jim, o vilão mais fdp e bem construído da história.

Sobre o desfecho, achei interessante, não sei se diria que achei muito bom. Gostaria de ter visto mais da origem da redoma e um pouco menos dos problemas da cidade, mas entendo que esta foi a intenção do autor - foco nas pessoas e suas peripécias e não tanto na origem.

Vale dizer que eu acompanhei esta história via audiobook, em inglês, o que por vezes facilitou seguir a história, mas que também pode ter atrapalhado mais na minha questão de memória dos nomes. Se tivesse seguido na leitura, talvez tivesse mais tempo para absorve-los, mas também teria muito mais chance de abandonar a leitura.

Em suma, achei um baita livro, com um enredo muito bom, personagens e passagens bem construídas, porém achei muito, muito longo e penoso chegar até o fim.

Recomendo para quem mantém um ritmo de leitura frequente e já leu outras obras do Stephen - e gostou. O audiobook em inglês também é bem narrado e engajante, bom pra quem tem um nível intermediário /avançado de listening.

If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you.

Stephen King is no stranger to putting more or less ordinary people in strange situations and let them deal with it. This book follows a similar recipe, cutting off a small town from the rest of the world completely. A drifter ex-soldier as one of the main heroes is not a novel idea. Neither is the"island" idea of being cut off from rest of the world. And of course neither is a despot trying to take over his little corner of the world. Put it all together and you get Under the dome.Looking back at the story, the villains are quite easy to identify early on. But their slow change from small-town jerks to full on villains is nevertheless quite a thing to watch. I kept asking (and still wonder) why and how would ordinary people let someone grab so much power and misuse it so blatantly. But then I guess this is not the crazy part of the story, but the more realisticone.One way or another, King is a master storyteller who can tell a story in a captivating way. At least it kept me up until 4:30 in the morning because I just had to finish those last 200 pages.One thing I will admit (and for which I am giving 4 stars)... There are just too many characters which are not all that developed. Even by the end of the book I was mixing them up to some degree and realized I did not even care that much. I cared for the story itself, but not the heroes themselves.

SPOILERS

This was the first book of Stephen King's that I've read. I loved the way he played with words, played with the reader, and immersed the reader into the story. The cast of characters was huge, and King handled them masterfully. I was constantly impressed with his ruthlessness. The book begins and ends with killing, gore, and horror. The idea of a city being isolated from the rest of the world by an impenetrable, invisible dome is unique and entertaining. King did a great job exploring the possible consequences of an event like that, exploring the nature of human fear especially. The main villain became more and more horrifically inhuman as the novel went on (before dying a completely human death). The reader was taken to the very edges of hope and pulled along toward the end, constantly wondering how King was going to pull this off. Several times I thought he would just end it with everyone getting blown up, or suffocating, or killing themselves.

The only thing I was disappointed about was that it was aliens. I personally prefer explanations that are a little more terrestrial, since I tend to think that 'it was aliens' is a bit of a cop-out.

I'm not a huge fan of Stephen King by I have enjoyed some of his work in the past. Under the Dome is an alarmingly large book, which made the audio version of it an ideal way to read.

King is a craftsman and despite the length of the book he keeps things moving fast. It doesn't feel long while you're reading it. You also don't really notice any flaws until you have time to think about it afterwards.

And there are a few flaws in this story of a small town suddenly stuck under a mysterious invisible force field. The rate at which things escalate and the scale of the disasters are a little hard to credit when looked at calmly. The number of coincidences required to make everything work stretches credibility.

But King deftly side steps this by presenting us with a tense situation and just squeezing tighter and tighter. And then when you think things are impossibly bleak… he makes it even worse. He’s always had a knack for likeable characters so the ghastly things he visits on many of them hit hard and ramp the stakes up even more.

His sometimes over-descriptive style can be easily ignored because you are so eager to find out what happens to these people. Somewhat more irritating are the random interludes where we see things from the point of view of animals. These seem largely unnecessary and stick out from the rest of the narrative.

His town of Chester’s Mill is populated by Stephen King tropes, not least of which are the religious lunatics and corrupt politicians. But somehow it doesn’t matter. The loathsome people are incredibly loathsome but the heroes are more rounded and it just makes you want to see the villains finally get their comeuppance even more.

My only real disappointment was the ending which could not live up to the intense buildup that King achieved.