Under the Dome, Stephen King                                                                    ****

Like most of America, I've read just about all of Stephen King's stuff.  I started with Cujo and Carrie when I was a kid, enjoyed the movie versions of Christine and Stand by Me during my teen years, finally understood The Stand and It during college and spent various times during my adult years going back to short story collections and re-reading Delores Claiborne.  Though I'm not a big fan of the "horror" genre in general, King has always been there as a huge part of popular culture;  bigger than horror and bigger than any other fiction writer (until folks like Dan Brown and Grisham came along).  Anyway, I could talk all day about King and his effect on our lives, but that wouldn't tell you anything about his latest book. 

Under the Dome is an epic novel.  It deals with the denizens of a small Maine town (don't all of King's books) that is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.  As their isolation becomes complete, we are treated to an amazing character study that is basically a microcosm of major human events.  How in the world can an evil dictator ever come to power?  How do revolutions occur?  How does ignoring our environment doom us to ruin?  In a world of normal, nice, good people is apathy and self-interest enough to do us in?

All of these issues and many more are dealt with in just a few days.  I will admit that for the first time in a long while this book caught me off guard -- in a very good way.  This is horror but not in the movie-monster kind of way.  It's more in the "TV coverage of a natural disaster" kind of way.  As the tension builds and the dome seems to contract down onto these folks, you can feel your own blood pressure rise just a little -- kind of like mild claustrophobia.  And don't get the impression that this is just a deep-thinking nerd novel.  It's got great stuff like meth. labs, religious zealots, affairs, plane crashes, gun fights, pshychopaths, heroes and nuclear missles. 

I loved this book.  Despite it's imposing size and page numbers, I read it in a week and had a hard time putting it down to go to sleep (and then had a hard time going to sleep).  If you have ever liked Stephen King, this is vintage.  As a matter of fact, he started this book back in the '80s, put it down for 20 years and then came back to it.  If you have never read anything by King, do yourself a favor -- pick this up and have yourself a good fright.