400 pages into Under the Dome...

Ok, maybe 395. But who's counting?

Anyway, I've been reading a lot of it lately. Things are starting to get complicated under the dome, and rather bloody, too. It's only been about 3 days since the dome dropped and there have already been rapes, murders, fights, you name it. As expected, the dome has not only cut the people off socially, but democratically as well. The police force is made up of a new recruitment of rapist and killers, all of which hardly old enough to drink. Of course, it makes for some interesting happenings.

I'm starting to think that the source of this is supernatural, after all. I won't go too much into it for sake of spoilers, but I will say that King (and fiction in general) likes to use children as a vessel for connecting with the spiritual/supernatural realms.

There are a lot of disturbing characters in this book, but I'm wondering if I am desensitized from it. I say this because I think if this were the first King book I'd ever read, I'd be fairly surprised at some of the things these characters do/think. But I'm not. Not after the disfigured man who practised necrophilia and cannibalism in Gerald's Game, not after the boy who killed his father in IT, and definitely not after the father who chained his son to a pole like a dog in the cellar to get rid of the 'bad gunky' in Lisey's Story. I'm wondering if there will be a new level of disturbia and one of these characters will surprise me down the line. I actually king of hope not. I'm fine with it right where it's at.

But I do like how even the most disturbing characters have other sides. For example, I had to check to make sure I was still reading from the same character's perpective after one of the more twisted ones showed compassion to a stranded pair of kids. I wholly expected him to just kill them or something.

I like surprises. And, so far, I'm digging this book.