So, I’ve had a lot of down time lately.  Spent New Year’s weekend with a cold so I stayed inside warm and hunkered down.  And I whiled away the hours reading the latest novel by Stephen King Under the Dome.

I guess I should preface this by saying I’m a big King fan.  Yeah, I know the literary elites like to turn their nose up and sniff that he is just a hack who churns out pulp fiction for the masses.  But I think the bigger point is that King is a master storyteller whose creativity in creating worlds (not just supernatural ones, but yeah a lot of that too) and characters that are almost real to us.  Certainly the  reader can almost always relate to the extreme challenges they face in King’s bizarre stories.  The Stand remains one of the best novels I have ever read.

It was also the longest until I tackled Under the Dome’s 1072 pages.  A hefty read indeed.  It was a good story built around an interesting premise.  But I thought it was overlong, sloppy, not particularly well written, and chock full of cliches and caricatures.  Yep, despite its length it seemed like King just phoned this one in.

I wouldn’t say don’t read it, it is a fine way to kill time.  But if you are expected a classic King spellbinder you will share my disappointment.