Product Description

“I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger...” writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up “1922”, the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King, linked by the theme of retribution.  For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife Arlette proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. 

In “Big Driver”, a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger is along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face to face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

“Fair Extension”, the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest.  Making a deal with the devil not only saves Harry Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband.  It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends “A Good Marriage”.

Like DIFFERENT SEASONS and FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, which generated such enduring hit films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, FULL DARK NO STARS proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1272 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-10
• Released on: 2009-11-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The achievement of Stephen King is unlike that of any writer. He has taken a genre which was somewhat moribund when he came to it -- the horror novel -- and transformed it into one of the most phenomenally successful areas for quality popular writing -- what's more, his unprecedented sales success has inspired hundreds of imitators, and while few can match his inspiration (or, for that matter, his jawdropping productivity), there is no question that he has rejuvenated the horror field. Not that King confined himself to the strict parameters one might associate with the genre; several of his books -- such as this latest one, The Dome, stray into science fiction territory). But King’s achievement doesn't end there -- such is his influence over other genres (notably the crime and thriller field) that writers in those genres have been obliged to up the ante in terms of gruesome compulsiveness (Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter books, for instance, owe much to the King transformation of the popular literature field). And as for that loaded world – ‘literature’ -- isn't Stephen King reputed to be the author who has brought quality writing into a field not noted for such things? (Not, that is, since the halcyon days of Edgar Allen Poe in a previous century). Is that claim true of the new book?

So... The Dome. This massive novel, 25 years in the writing (if Stephen King is to be believed), is quite his most ambitious project, and brings to mind earlier blockbuster novels which aficionados considered to be among the writer's best work. Something like the basic premise here may be found in a classic piece of British science fiction, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned). In that book, a village is isolated by an invisible force field -- and in the King novel, the residents can no more get out than the outside world can enter. John Wyndham's narrative involved the insemination of the women in the town by unseen alien presences, but Stephen King in The Dome has chosen to work in a different area. When the small New England town of Chester's Mill is cut off from the outside world by a mysterious force, all the laws of physics seem to be up for grabs; cars leaving town come up against invisible barriers, and there is death and mutilation for whatever was caught in the boundaries of an invisible field. Inside the dome, the inhabitants of the town deal with the catastrophe in a surprising (and often alarming) variety of ways: ex-military hero Dale Barbara has already come up against the antisocial elements of the town, and has been trying to get out. But the self-styled boss of the town, the demagogue Big Jim Rennie, soon establishes a Machiavellian control (another echo of the books of John Wyndham, in which catastrophe always throw up vicious, fascist-style leaders who capitalise on the disaster).

As ever, King develops his massive dramatis personae with great assurance, and demonstrates once again that his imagination in terms of plotting is as strong as ever. Those, however, who have made a case for King as a quality writer rather than a great popular entertainer will not find much ammunition for their arguments here, but this great sprawling canvas affords many pleasures. --Barry Forshaw

Review

'Spooky, mysterious, gripping and satisfyingly scary'

(Daily Telegraph on JUST AFTER SUNSET )

'King has the ability to capture the reader's imagination from the first page'

(Sun on JUST AFTER SUNSET )

‘His most accomplished work: 13 beautifully turned tales, no two of which are alike' (Daily Express on JUST AFTER SUNSET )

About the Author

Stephen King is the highly acclaimed author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are: Under the Dome, Just After Sunset, Cell, and Lisey's Story. His acclaimed non-fiction book On Writing, is also a bestseller. He was the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

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Customer Reviews

Great, not perfect, but still great
I read this brick of a book in a matter of days which is saying something as I have a full-time job and not an awful lot of time on my hands... all the same I literally couldn't help myself. Stephen King is nothing if not a bloody good read!

The premise is great, well-written and spooky and there are some brilliant characters. Also for the first half of the book a kind of supernatural whodunnit is played out (Who made the dome, was it aliens, the army, something/someone else?) which I found really enjoyable. All in all I really do feel it does stand up to scrutiny when compared to his previous classics; like IT and the Tommyknockers which I feel it owes a lot. Then again (unlike some reviewers) I am not a hater of modern king, I really loved Duma Key for example.

I have but two qualms, one is the children. Now I really really feel that before Mr King next puts pen to paper (or finger to laptop) he should go out and have a talk to a real 12-18 year old of today. I say this because Kings writing of modern day children and teenagers in Under the Dome is sometimes stilted, occasionally cloying and once or twice plain bad. At it's worse King sounds similar to a middle-aged politician using 'catch-phrases' and 'hip anecdotes' and references 'things that young people like' in an embarrassing attempt to be 'down with the kids'. Maybe if King just tried less hard to use 'youth lingo' with his young characters they'd feel more natural. That aside... I did like the three main young characters even if I had to wince at their dialogue a couple of times.

Secondly, the payoff was a little disappointing. I think the idea was pretty good and the final sequence was actually pretty well written but I guess I was hoping for one final injection of fear... As is often the case (in film and in books) the monsters are always scarier when you can't quite see them, and once the evil force in Dome was revealed a lot of the fear and suspense was lost.

These criticisms out of the way I have very rarely been so easily taken hostage by a book. For the past 5 days the town and it's many inhabitants have taken over my mental landscape and I can honestly say that I actually miss them and didn't want the book to end. Setbacks aside if you like King, if you like clever sci-fi, nerve-jangling thrillers or a clever political allegory you'll love this.

Thank goodness!! He's back!
Before I start I want to lay my cards on the table. I have been a huge King fan for a looooong time. Some of his early works are among my favourite books of all time and my copies of "IT", "The Stand" and "The Tommyknockers" have been read to tatters. Having said that, I'm honest enough with myself to admit that I have found most of his books (since "Dolores Claiborne" I think) to be utterly dreadful and I have really missed the delighted anticipation that I used to feel on picking up a new King novel and settling down for a rattling good read. It was therefore with a lot of trepidation that I bought "Under the Dome". As with "Cell", "Lisey's Story" and the rest of the dreck that he's been pumping out lately, I was prepared for more head-shaking disappointment.

But I am so glad I bought this because The Master is back! Oh what a relief! This is almost classic King, a richly rewarding story in which SK does what few others can do with such mastery - write utterly believable characters that you get to know and love and loathe in equal measure. I won't re-hash the plot here, if you've read some of the other reviews you know what happens. But it's what King does with the plot that makes it special. While not quite on the same epic level as "The Stand", this is the best that King has produced in a long time, and that makes it pretty darned good by anyone's reckoning. Don't be put off by the plethora of dramatis personae introduced at the very beginning, stick with it and it gets better as the story unfolds. "Under the Dome" is very very close to being vintage old-school King, and for this Constant Reader that's something very special. Highly recommended and no hesitation in giving 5*.

A classic chunk of old-style blockbuster King
I've become a slow reader recently, but I surged through this one in a week, so it must have done something right. Like most of the best stories in the broader fantasy genre, the novel takes a single, simple idea and then asks how that change will affect the characters. Then it runs with the developments to a logical conclusion. In this case the idea is that a small town in Maine (got to feel sorry for King's fictional version of the state!) one day becomes trapped under a dome, a large force-field that ensures that nobody can get in or out. The problem of why it's appeared is rapidly replaced by the bigger problem of how everyone who has been trapped will react now that they are in the odd situation of being cut off from civilization while still being a part of civilization.

In the style of other King books that have examined this descent of man theme such as Needful Things or Tommyknockers, the supernatural elements are almost non-existent and instead the story lets the characters react to the situation, and some react well, and most react very badly indeed. So the tale develops into a classic good versus evil scenario and it's one that builds then maintains the tension. There are numerous scenes of epic destruction and mayhem as civilization crumbles and surviving is all about who is strongest rather than who is the most decent. Sometimes, in previous books, I've questioned the depths people go to, but they usually have the excuse of an evil force, but with that not being the case here, it actually feels more believable. Mobs can and do act like this and as the new order that forms employs most of the techniques of repressive regimes in our history, sadly this is all too plausible. As always with King I often asked myself if it was going on too long, but in this case there's a massive cast and nobody is going anywhere, so I was happy with the length and I would happily have carried on reading if it had been even longer.

I won't comment on the ending as I've already come across mixed views on it, but for me, in an epic like this, the seemingly main points of the book of: will the main bad guy win and why is the dome there ultimately become irrelevant. It's all about the journey the characters take and what they learn about human nature when confronting it in the raw, and as King depicts that as well as he ever has, I reckon the story works and I hope he writes a few more blockbusters in this style.