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As always, King is right on with the violence and creepy

Something has gone horribly wrong in Chester's Mill, Maine. Without warning an invisible wall has separated the town from the outside world. Perhaps if the town had been able to pull together they could have met the challenge, but instead the town becomes divided. On one side is the incredibly competent Dale "Barbie" Barbara, an ex-soldier, who has an unfortunate ability to accidentally pick fights with powerful people. On the other side is the town authorities--namely "Big" Jim Rennie, who controls all aspects of the town and despite his status as a loud and proud Christian doesn't seem to embrace very many Christian ideals...Above all, UNDER THE DOME is ambitious. King has been working on the novel since the 70s and it's no wonder that it's taken so long. The cast and scope of the novel is unbelievable.When I began reading the book I remembered one of the things I enjoy most about Stephen King: he's a writer of our time. In fact, he takes particular care to make sure to absolutely ingrain his books with elements of our every day life and concerns. The big themes are there, sure: corruption of those in power; hypocrisy and religion; good and evil. But the thing I love even better are the references. King will throw out references off the cuff and--for me--it's delightful. Some references are straight-forward (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE), some ironic (THE MIST), and some oblique but all the more delightful for it (Jack Reacher).The big themes, too, are pretty compelling in this novel. When a town has to become its own support how will it survive? The corruption and control of the town leaders was a little too real. I also enjoyed the questions King was asking of religion--of those who preach loudly, but have no real values versus those who doubt but do the right thing.As always, King is right on with the violence and creepy. The scariest part of UNDER THE DOME isn't the supernatural-seeming dome, but the people who try to use the disaster. King doesn't pull any punches with the point either. There's one particular scene that will probably never fade from my mind because it was just so utterly depressing, disgusting, and frightening. Though that scene is exceptional there are many scenes in the book where I sat back and just thought, "what a scene"! Another reason I like King so much is that his scenes tend to have a great visual value in my mind.Now, I'd like to say that every page of this 1088 page behemoth is necessary and lean. However, I can't. My one real complaint about UNDER THE DOME is that it seems too inflated in some areas that aren't particularly important while it's rather flat in some important characteristics. As an example, I think a lot more information could have been good about the main heroes: Barbie and Julia. Instead, while we do get one major piece of back story each, that's really all we're given. The problem also extends to the villains. Big Jim seemed almost like a caricature much of the time rather than a real human with real motivations. Then again, once a book ventures into 1000+ pages, I think that's a risk that the author runs. No book so long is going to be without fault.