What would happen if a small town of only a couple thousand people in Main were to be suddenly and very effectively blocked off from the outside world? What if the outside world could look in and even talk to them but could not remove the barrier no matter what was happening in the town? What if that town was being run by a very corrupt “Selectman” who would stop at nothing to consolidate and gain more and more power?
In Chester’s Mill, Main that is just what happens. One sunny fall day there is a small furry little woodchuck walking down the side of the highway into town. The animal meets up with a man who is walking out of town. The animal decides to go off the road and hide under a log while the man passes but after taking only a couple of steps he is suddenly cut in half by an invisible guillotine of some sort. His legs twitch a couple of time and his blood and entrails spread out on the road. As the man stands and watches this strange thing he hears an airplane and looks up just in time to see the small twin engine piper cub smash into an invisible barrier. The plane scrunches up and flies apart, exploding and dumping out the pilot and passenger, in pieces to be strewn alongside the highway beside the little woodchuck.
The man is forced to turn back. He cannot leave town after all. He must go back and face the people who beat him up the previous night. He must also face the corrupt leader of the town who hates him. As he resumes his old job as fry cook at the small town café he doesn’t have much time before the persecution begins. It escalates until our new hero is arrested for murder and will almost certainly face death by firing squad in this small town. He has been framed and a lot of people know it but by this time the whole place is under the heal of a cruel dictator who is clever at manipulating people to approve of his methods “for the good of the town.”
King sets up this friction between good and evil in the town but he also gives us the mystery of the “Dome”. What caused this thing? Is it a strange government experiment in which the people of Chester’s Mill are guinea pigs. Is it something that springs out of the corrupt town leader’s dealing with his big Meth factory out in the woods? Is it something from some sort of beings from another world? And, most importantly, is there a way to stop it and gain back the good and justice of the United States and get away from their petty dictator.
The man is killing people and appointing teen age hoodlums to his police force which is rapidly growing into a small army resembling the “Hitler Youth.” These youth are getting out of control and high on power. They are doing their own raping and killing but that is ok with the town leader as long as it serves his quest for ultimate power.
Eventually the source of the “Dome” is discovered. A small flat box on top of a ridge emits a pulsing purple light. Even thought surrounded by a radiation shield the good guys get through to the box but once there they find that they cannot do anything to stop its influence. Everything they try fails to stop the force field that maintains the “Dome.”
When in the final chapters the dictator’s men attack the operators of the Meth factory and fail to take it over the crazy operator of the factory blows it up along with thousands of pounds of propane that was the source of power for cooking the Meth. The resulting explosion inside the dome creates a huge firestorm that completely destroys the town of “Chester’s Mill” along with all but about 30 of its residents. The storm burns all the oxygen under the “Dome” which seems to be the final end to our heroes. Will they manage to escape? If so, what can they do?
Stephen Kings gives us another of his exciting tales full of the imagination that only King can seem to come up with. His fertile mind gives this “Dome” that will keep you reading almost non-stop for all 1,074 pages. It is a long one but it is very good. I give this one a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
