Book review
Written by Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton hardback
Release date 10 November 2009

When the Dome falls over the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine, everyone’s shocked – but they don’t expect it to be there for long. As time progresses, though, and the struggle for power inside the Dome escalates, it becomes a matter of survival for all those involved…

Under the Dome is the biggest novel Stephen King has written since The Stand or IT and is an epic tale in every sense of the word.

On a beautiful autumn day, the lives of the inhabitants of a small Maine town are thrown into disarray when an invisible dome suddenly cuts them off (in some cases literally) from the outside world. Iraqi vet Dale ‘Barbie’ Barbara is tasked with finding out the source of the dome, believed to be somewhere inside the town itself. Unfortunately, Barbie has recently fallen foul of the son of Chester’s Mill’s corrupt town selectman, Jim Rennie.

As time goes on and the situation inside the Dome becomes ever more unstable thanks to internal power struggles and Rennie’s determination to keep control whatever the cost, the race is on to find the source of the phenomenon before the situation breaks down completely and there’s no one left to save.

It’s been a long time since Stephen King attempted a book on this scale, and Under The Dome shows he hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to bringing an epic story down to the human level and the everyday. The novel is full of well-realised characters that you either sympathise with or – in the case of the villains – at least understand what made them the way they are.

The Dome itself is a clever way of enforcing the microcosm of the town as it threatens to implode, and the ending shows only too well how destructive the most inconsequential beginnings can ultimately prove. Marie O’Regan

VERDICT: 9/10
Small town America under attack from the unknown – King at his best.