Under The Dome

I just finished Stephen King's latest this past weekend. I've been reading Mr. King since I was 12 and my first book was the stories of 'Night Shift'. King is still my favorite author after all these years. I know he's a lot of other people's favorite and many critics over the years have considered his stuff to be popcorn and no more, but I know that I like his style, his character development and his outlook on the world. I fell in love with his horror stories first since that was his initial bread and butter, and 'The Dead Zone' is still my favorite book to this day. 'The Stand' would probably be second and I usually read both of them every other year. I'm so glad that a comic version of 'The Stand' has been coming out for a year now because it's much more detailed and has a good visual sense that I've come to expect from this masterpiece. 'Under the Dome' is similar to 'The Stand' in many ways. There's a horror element, a group of people cut off from everything, sides are taken. My initial response to the 'cause' of the dome was sort of down because I was expecting more, but then I realized that it was like Shayamalan's 'Signs', it wasn't about the aliens but the family that had fallen apart and how they were brought together to deal with this. This story isn't really about the dome or what it's done, but how the trapped town reacts and it's also a microcosm in a way of all humanity 'trapped' on the Earth with nowhere else to go. In that respect I definitely enjoyed it and there were several sections were I ended up staying up too late and was groggy the next day because I could not put it down. What more could I ask? I'm disappointed in hearing that J.J. Abrams may NOT be doing the 'Dark Tower' series now...but maybe it's impossible to be done and the soon to be coming out comic version will have to suffice. Either way, I know Stephen King will have to die one day and then I'll be in uncharted waters...or I could finally write my own novels to pay my respects to him.