Stephen King Fans discussion

Becky wrote: "Fran, I wasn't looking for a more inspirational climax. In fact my disappointment had nothing to do with that at all, really. I was just disappointed that she just gave up completely. And it didn't..."

Becky wrote: "Fran, I wasn't looking for a more inspirational climax. In fact my disappointment had nothing to do with that at all, really. I was just disappointed that she just gave up completely. And it didn't..."

Christina Stind wrote: "I finished the book last night and although I liked it, it wasn't SK at his best in my opinion.
I'm not a die hard SK fan - I loved him when I was a teenager and read a lot of his works in translat..."

I have to agree the dead voice really did not have a real purpose. Brenda's voice is also the only dead voice Horace heard. And in the end the papers really did not matter other than getting Andrea killed. It kindof was out of place. The Dead people who were bothering James Rennie however were how King lets someone's consciousness get them and was more in line with King's techniques. Maybe Horace was going to play a bigger role but as the story developed didn't.

Mary wrote: "The top town guy James Rennie seemed to me to be a version of Boss Hogg off the Dukes of Hazard and the guy who became Chief of Police, Randolf was kindof like Rosco off the Dukes too. Did anyone e..."

I did! Early on I pictured Burt Reynolds playing Big Jim and I never could get that out of my head. Randolf was pretty Roscoeish too.

I finally finished this one - better late than never, eh? I agree with the comments about the dead voice talking to the dog. But someone also mentioned how King changing tenses took them out of the story. I really liked it, because you could tell that, as soon as he started talking in the present tense, some serious $#!+ was going to go down!

The part of the narrating that kept distracting me was his major over-use of foreshadowing. I know he does it in all of his books, but this one seemed filled with things like, "It would be the last time she saw him alive," and "they saw almost nothing, until half an hour later, long after the missile had failed." =\ I get it - bad stuff is going to happen. Just tell it happening, don't tell me over and over that it's going to happen!

I loved Big Jim as the villain. He started out as just kind of a douche with big aspirations (big fish in a small bowl) but ended up turning into pure evil! The only part I didn't like about the ending was that I wanted him to still be alive when the dome disappeared. I really wanted a more gratifying disposal of him.

One other thing I really liked was the police force of little power-hungry hooligans. They reminded me of the security guards at a mall I worked at in high school. They also play really well with Big Jim - absolute power corrupting absolutely. A great paragraph early on was:

"As Julia drove past the Nova, Barbie noted a sticker reading ASS, GAS OR GRASS-NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE. Also a police bubblegum light on the dash. He thought the contrast summed up everything that was now wrong in Chester's Mill."

Here's a little oddity I noticed while reading.

Dome Day is Saturday, October 21, 2012. If you'll look at a calender, you'll see that this day doesn't exist. Due to the Leap Year, October 21 skips from Friday in 2011 to Sunday in 2012.

It's little tweaks of reality like this that I have always enjoyed King's writing for.

Sarah, I also liked the whole recruited police force too. They were certainly a great addition to the sinister forces at work.

In fact, Carter Thibodeau was one of my favorite characters. As nasty as he was, he did some serious thinking along the way. He wasn't just a brainless thug follower. I had hoped for some sort of redemption out of him by the end.

2012? Are you sure that it's 2012? I never saw anything about that year. Maybe I missed it. I swear I saw stuff about 2009, and I thought that like most of King's books it was set in the current year.

I thought that too at first. But something I read told me it was a few years ahead of us. I wish I could find where it pins down the year, but it's a thick book and it was deeply placed. And subtle.

I remember mention of Obama's reelection campaign and that the vote was coming up. There were also some other oddities in there.

Oh yeah, there was one part where they mention a sequel series to Lost, which happens after the show ends. Well, the final season of Lost will be aired this year.

Hmm... I do think that I recall seeing an "Obama '12" mention, but I didn't think much of it, because there are already calls for certain other candidates for 2012 elections. I won't name scary Alaskan names though. :P

I didn't catch a Lost mention. Probably because I don't watch the show. =\

Does anyone else have a more specific reference to the year? Or a better memory? I'd like to find it, but that book is a tad on the HUGE side to weed through.

There was also something about someone being enraged because a gas station was charging $11 a gallon, but I didn't think much at the time.

I do remember thinking 2012 to be appropriate, since that's supposedly when the world is going to end.

Oh, and the October 21 thing. That day doesn't fall on a Saturday in the other years either, so even if I misread the year, it's like an alt-reality day.

Could be.
I read the high gas prices just to be a response TO the dome, not a normal price for that time. I think someone was outraged about it. It makes sense to me that they'd have raised prices on gas.

A kind of "You need it, I have the only supply... Ka-ching!" deal.

Yeah, that's what I took it as too. It was only after taking the other little things that I thought it might be more than that.

Possibly... I can't think of any other books that he's written in the future though. They are all contemporary and have direct references to the time in which they take place.

Granted, this one didn't have a lot of references because the town was cut off, so most of it was through newscasts and stuff, but I really got the impression that Obama was still a new president, not that he was closing in on the end of his term.

I wish I had taken some notes as I read....

LOL You'll just have to re-read it Chris. Chop, chop! ;)

I was afraid you'd say that...

Hehe...

Hey, here's a neat little website: http://www.chestersmill.com/

That's pretty cool :)

Another advantage to the Kindle - search capabilities! The only place where they mention 2012 is at Location 11713 out of 17947, 65% through the book (I guess it would roughly be page 710 in the DTB, it's right at a sub-chapter 8), and it's when Carter Thibodeau was reading an article in Car and Driver comparing the 2012 BMW H-car and the 2011 Ford Vesper R/T.

And Becky, you're right, Carolyn had a Volvo - "the sticker on the bumper, faded but still readable: OBAMA '12! YES WE STILL CAN"

That's the only time the number 12 is in there and not referring to a chapter.

Hmm... I just did a search on Caranddriver.com and you can see 2012 BMW's on their site. So that doesn't prove it either. =\

Thanks for looking that up too! :D

Doh! Guess we'll never know. I forgot to mention earlier, I agreed with you on the gas issue. It seemed like price gouging to me when I read it, as a result of the dome, and didn't strike me as necessarily being what the future holds in store. Although, Chris, I can see how it fits into your theory in hindsight.

Thanks for looking that up, Sarah. That is helpful.

Now about the gas. Yes, gouging goes on whenever there's a crisis. Even the gov't does it, they just get mad when an individual does it. Anyway, it fits into my theory not because it went up to $11. Rather, the assumption I made was that it went up to $11 from some unknown future price that we don't know. Say, $6 or $7. A jump that high would cause anger. A jump from $2.60 to $11 would be unrealistic, even in these times where the oil companies and gov't repeatedly take advantage of the citizens. But again, it's an assumption so may have nothing to do with my theory.

The Obama for 2012 campaign and 2011 and 2012 models of cars support what I'm saying, even if they don't completely prove it.

But here's a thought. If 2012 was not a Leap Year, the 21st of October would fall on Saturday. Thus, to me Dome Day happens in a slightly altered future reality to our own.

Make sense? I do think that King probably left it ambiguous on purpose. Though of course I suspect something Darktowerish going on too.

Chris wrote: "Though of course I suspect something Darktowerish going on too."

I like where your head's at! A slightly altered reality is a great way to visualize it.

What did you guys think of the leatherheads?

Eh, they were ok. They came across as somewhat 2001ish to me. I'm not easily impressed by aliens in most cases. In this, I didn't think they were anywhere near as good as villains as the Rennies.

Yeah, I was pretty nonplussed by them myself. I thought they were really under-explained for being the ones who caused the whole thing in the first place. Seemed kind of like, by that point, King was tired and ready for the book to just be over.

I really don't think aliens are King's strong point. He doesn't use them often, but when he does it seems like they're only so-so.

An exception to this is the story "I Am the Doorway" from Night Shift.

I get what you're saying Chris. I dunno though. I think that I can go along with a slightly altered version of reality, but being a couple years in the future is weird. King's never (to my knowledge) done that before.

Of course, there's nothing against branching out, but he's the King of Americana, so dating his stories with references to the things that we recognize, like Ipods, is part of his calling card, you know? Doing this AND making it in a not-too-distant future throws off my chi. LOL :P


Spoilers Below:


As far as the leatherheads, I didn't feel like they were the focus at all. The town was the focus, so the amount that they were explained was fine with me. Plus, what was explained was merely educated guesses based on visions from the box and supposition. We can't really know, so unless they send us a "Hey, thanks for letting our kids experiment on your town... Now let us tell you all about us." note, we're not really going to know anythign about them.

The way it's presented in the book, it probably doesn't matter if it's this year, last year, or next. It's a very subtle thing.

The one thing I do know is that King isn't random or chaotic. There is method to his madness. I don't think he'll pick a date out of thin air and not verify it on a calendar. I think his wicked little mind would see the same humor that mine does with tweaking a day around a Leap Year jump. Again, probably isn't essential to the story.

But it does fit that whole DT/Stand theme that these worlds are almost ours, but not quite.

Yes... True. Maybe UTD will be referenced in the new DT book? The Stand was never pegged as another world until it was referenced in W&G, so... could be.

That and the fact that we weren't all killed off in a plague of Captain Trips.

I've seen that most of his works are isolated, taking place in little places in the big world. But that the exceptions like The Stand, and now UTD have a more global effect and tend to get placed in this "other" world.

I call UTD global because of the national interest in the events at Chester Mills. Unlike Dreamcatcher, Firestarter, and others where the government covered it up. Or those like Carrie that were reported in tabloids.

Chris wrote: "That and the fact that we weren't all killed off in a plague of Captain Trips."

Well, there is that. =\

Not that I'm complaining, of course. LOL

You do know, if Captain Trips happened today, and you and I survived, we'd probably be getting recruitment dreams from Nevada just because of that book we just read together...

Probably... Hmm.

Well, I've never been to Vegas. :P

Neither have I...so what, you would be Julie Lawry and I'd be the Ratman?

I'm not mean enough to be Julie.

Umm, on second thought... I think that we should just stop in Boulder and ignore those recruitment dreams.

Good idea. We could hang out with Mother Abagail and listen to Larry jam.

Yeah. Maybe I could get him to teach me guitar. :D

Anybody else spot the reference to Jack Reacher? He is an ex-military policeman who features in a series of books by Lee Childs (one of his books is on the list of SK's favourite reads of 2009). It made me smile when Colonel Cox mentioned him a couple of times!

This is why I love goodreads - because I can talk books with people I never would have met otherwise, and who are well read enough to pick up on things like that, that I never would have known! That's so cool, Denise!

No, I'd have never noticed that. LOL

Okay, I was just thinking about villains. Namely, Big Bad Jim Renney and I can't remember anything good about him! In Misery, Annie Wilkes had a good side and a bad side (well, some critics say she was bi-polar). Did Jim Renney have a good side?

I don't think that Annie Wilkes had a good side. She had a sane facade, but I think underneath that was nothing but crazy.

Jim Rennie didn't have one either, in my opinion. He was just bad. Not crazy like Annie, but just bad. Worse BECAUSE he was sane, really.

Jim had the sane facade, too. Both Jim and Annie did their best to let people think they were normal, but people could see both Jim and Annie for who they really were. That's why she got put on the stand in Denver, and everyone under the dome knew that Jim Rennie was the control freak really running things.

Ooh, I love the way that, whenever he got upset, he would smile. King had about ten different ways of describing that cold smile, the one that came when someone disagreed with him, the one that never reached his eyes...

Oh yeah, he did have the sane facade. I meant that he didn't have a good side. LOL

Yeah - definitely not!

Annie Wilkes did save Paul Sheldon's life. Even if the motivation behind it was completely selfish. So it's the motivation behind the act that makes them good or bad people? I don't know, I just felt like she wanted to be nurturing (even if it was only to make herself feel better), yet, distructive, depending on her mood at that moment. I just thought that all bad people could have a little bit of good in them. And I can't find it in Jem Rennie. *sigh* "Lucy, 'splain this to me! I'm so con-fuse-ED."

LOL Bonita! I know what you mean. I've always been the type to look for the other side of people. I used to be the kid who thought that serial killers would never kill me because I'd be nice to them and talk to them. (Thank goodness I never met one. I have a feeling now that that theory would fail. LOL)

I think that the intention is a lot to do with it. Paul just fell into her lap, really. She couldn't have passed that up. If she had met him in a diner or something, I don't think that she'd have hesitated to lure him outside, knock him out and then kidnap him. Her self-interests motivate her, just like Jim's did him.

Thanks Becky, that cleared up a little of this fog surrounding my brain. Intention. Yeah, that makes a lot of difference...

Since we're reading On Writing this month, my brain is switching gears. I seem to recall that all characters should have flaws and that all villains should have something heartfelt about them, like that guy in Blaze: A Novel. Not sure were I got that from, but anyway...

Yeah, I never thought that I would become a victim of a serial killer either, but after reading Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?: Selected Early Stories (Here's the story link http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/works/... ), I'm not so easily persuaded. Scary stuff.