The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.

You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.

Under the Dome is a mammoth of a book. I bought the hardback as soon as it was out in 2009. I originally thought I read somewhere that he had worked on the novel long ago, set it aside, and then pulled it back out to rewrite it and publish it. Now, I’ve read more than once that he lost it and had to start over.

I recall several details about the story. Obama as president appeared in the story. The main character wandering into town was a bit of a male Mary Jane. Things being cut in half. The plane crash. The bullet test. The unusual cause being discovered. A ghost talking to a dog randomly in the middle. The ending of things and the struggle of the survivors. I believe I recall stars turning red and falling from the sky.

I expected the book to be apocalyptic in its scope, something like The Stand, due to it being even longer than The Stand. The time period covered in the novel was shorter than I expected.

Some of the darker aspects of the story made me wonder how they were going to adapt it into an ongoing series. It was better than I think people give it credit for and it involved the characters being stuck in there longer like I expected from the novel, considering the length. The adaptation had some problems with it for sure.

I look forward to tackling this one again. See you on the other side of this long journey. Maybe generous journey is a better way to say. King did take all this time writing this book for me to read, all these paragraphs, all these pages. And I liked this book very much the first time through. I will attempt to both savor it and read through it more quickly than I did the first time.

My next post in this series will be After Under the Dome which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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