UNDER THE DOME (Stephen King) - January 8/10

This sprawling novel is ultimately far more entertaining than I might've expected, as King does a superb job of introducing something like two dozen characters and subjecting them to a thoroughly horrifying situation. Though there were a few characters I was never quite able to place, King effectively manages to hold the reader's interest pretty much from start to finish (at over 1000 pages, there are admittedly a few stretches that aren't quite as enthralling as one might've hoped). The climax, involving the town's almost total destruction, is riveting and ranks with the most exciting writing I've read in years. And the ending, in which one alien takes pity on the town and removes the dome, is just about as satisfying as I was hoping. (I had feared that the book would end with the dome still on the town and everyone dead.) ***1/2 out of ****