Under the Dome by Stephen King

I've been a fan of King for many years. I've read dozens of his books over the years, my favorites being The Gunslinger Series, The Stand, and of course It.

The story of Under the Dome is pretty simple; Chester's Mill, a small town in Maine, is suddenly and inexplicably encased in an invisible, unbreakable, impermeable dome. As the small town adjusts to its new isolated existence, things quickly begin to unravel for the citizens of Chester's Mill. And within a week, things unravel completely.

I loved the characters in this book, they are incredibly distinct and memorable. This book has a LARGE cast of characters, and King manages to make them each feel real. There is also a very sharp line between the good characters and the bad characters. Typically I would find this polarization to be a little off-putting. I like moral ambiguity in books, and characters that are hard to figure out. But the distinct good/bad characters in Under the Dome are a delight to read about. The good guys are likable and brave, and they do the right thing even when it's the hard choice, and the bad guys are just downright evil, and in this book, it just works.

The town itself is arguably the lead character in this book, and this works very well as a storytelling technique, you really feel for the little town, when something bad happens to the town, as a reader, you really empathize with the town. This was also a very appealing part of the book.

The only issue I take with this book is the payoff at the end. The lead-up to the final section of the book is exquisite, but the actual end left me feeling a little let down. I don't know what I expected, and I feel that expectations are often a curse to have when reading a book. But the ending of this book was not King's best work.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book. It's a really fun read, and it moves at a breakneck speed, right from the very beginning. Even though I wasn't crazy about the end, I really connected with the characters, and I felt real sorrow and loss when the book ended. As my aunt said to me: I'll really miss my friends from Chester's Mill.

NOTE: I purchased the Audiobook version of this book for a road-trip I took to Kentucky, and I have to gush about the Narrator; Raul Esparza rivals Neil Gaiman as my top audiobook narrators. He manages to do many distinct voices (both male and female), without coming off too cheesy. This is a hard thing to do, and he does a great job with it. I don't listen to Audiobooks all that often, but I know how critical a good narrator is, and this particular book doesn't disappoint.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman

I don't read a ton of non-fiction. I like the creative license one can take within the fictionalized genre and prefer fiction based on facts usually. That being said, there are certain real things that interest me too much to allow any fiction to invade; the state of our planet/way of life is one of them.

My knowledge of the environment and external factors that affect is pretty limited. I know what the Average Joe knows - pollution is bad, recycling is good, and our way of life is slowly strangling the planet. So, I picked up Friedman's book to get a better perspective on our situation and who's doing what to help the planet out. I expected a lot of science and some finger-pointing with a simple solution to fixing everything...that's just not how it works.

Friedman breaks down the global environmental issues into key parts ranging from energy consumption to our dependence on oil. He explains why each part has its own set of problems and then talks strategy for lessen the problem. He doesn't solve our environmental troubles, he strategizes on ways to improve upon them. I found this approach very refreshing. Educate me on an issue and then open up a discussion on making it better, that's how you're going to get me interested in what's going on. Don't feed me an absolute solution because there probably isn't one.

Also discussed in depth is the role the U.S. can play in addressing these environmental problems, especially our dependence on "dirty" energy. The U.S. has an opportunity to shoot out in front of other countries as a provider of "clean" energy thus reestablishing ourselves as an innovator and leader in global development. Friedman's call to action in the book was strong and well-written, but most of it it was logical. Just like his proposed strategies for altering our energy dependence, nothing is too radical or too hypothetical. What the man says makes sense. Not only that, it's stuff anybody can understand and support. Friedman doesn't ask us to abandon our cars right now and build a wind turbine in our backyard, but he does ask us to speak up and demand our government pass incentives and provide funding to enable research and development of cleaner energy and more efficient processes.

While there were times I found my mind wandering as I read, overall, this book held just the right combination of passion and intelligence to be extremely engaging. I couldn't help talking about what I was learning with everyone. This book made me understand that I can play a role in saving the world and I finished the book with hope for changes to come.

Fables Graphic Novel Series - Adversary Storyline, Volumes 1-12 by Bill Willingham, et al.

The Fables series is a comic book for the masses. There isn't a person out there who's unfamiliar with the motley crew assembled in this engaging series.

You're introduced to a reality where all fabled characters exist. They've lived on worlds of their own for - well for an indeterminate amount of time. Our world, known as the "Mundane" world because of our lack of magic, is just another place occupying space alongside all these others. The fables happily lived separate, doing their own thing, until an unknown adversary begins conquering the fabled worlds - killing, capturing, and forcing into exile all the characters from our favorite childhood stories.

The fables flee to our world and, under the guide of some powerful magic, assume normal "human" lives in New York City with a farm in upstate New York for all the talking animals. The hope is to get back home one day, to defeat this adversary, but the process is slow and the fables are forced to create a functioning community in our mundane world to survive.

Volume One begins with the fable community having been up and running for a long time. King Cole is the mayor with Snow White as his right-hand "man." Boy Blue and Bufkin (a flying monkey from Oz) assist in running the mayor's office. Bigby Wolf, a.k.a The Big Bad Wolf, has taken on a human disguise to serve as Deputy of Fabletown. Among the town's residents are Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and her husband Beast, Pinocchio, and a slew of other familiar and no-so-familiar faces.

While there is an element of the fantastic to this story (how could there not be?) what's happening to the characters is rooted in what's real to you and me. Characters face human struggles from kidnapping to murder to all out war. They've been tossed unwillingly from their homes, given up or lost just about everything and are struggling to make life work in an environment that forces them to keep their true identities a secret from outsiders.

It's the combination of real struggles, familiar characters, and the fantastical that makes this series so compelling. Both the writing and the illustrations walk you through a suspenseful and intricate plot that culminates with the lives of all the characters being changed forever. It's an exciting read that wouldn't be complete in any other form but the graphic genre. It's also accessible to anyone who likes an adventure story - it's not just for typical comic book fans.

Note: The adversary storyline is just the first for the series. With monthly publications, the Fables are already facing new challenges so it's a series with some longevity to it, but not a high cost to you since you're buying brief issues each month rather than an entire novel. Just another appealing aspect :)

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Spoilers about "Doomsday Book" ahead, read with caution.

A few weeks ago, I was planning a trip to the book store to stock up on some new books. The last time I splurged I only purchased recommendations from friends; which I have discovered is, by far, the best way to purchase books. The last time I went to the store, I branched out and decided I would pick up a few books that I have never heard of, simply because they are award winning books.

Those of you out there that have been reading SciFi books know that there are two major SciFi awards out there, the Hugo awards and the Nebula awards. I figured if I picked a book that had won BOTH awards, I would be in good hands. So I grabbed "Doomsday Book" as well as a few others, simply based on the awards they had won.

Doomsday Book takes place in a future where historians are able to travel back in time as observers and witness history first-hand. A young student at Oxford College named Kivrin is sent to the middle ages to study and observe the people there shortly before the arrival of the black plague. The day that Kivrin is sent back to the middle ages(inadvertently to the exact year and month that the black plague arrived), a corresponding pandemic outbreak happens in the future(present). The book is split between Kirvrin's experience in the middle ages, and the the flu outbreak in the future.

Before I get too into this review, I want to make this point clear: I really enjoy old SciFi, some of my favorite stories were written years before I was born. However, I've found that as time moves on and technology progresses, if a book posits a future in which some of the most basic elements of technology (like cell phones) don't exist, it takes me out of the moment. I know this is a petty complaint, but it's hard for me to really buy into a society that can send people back in time, but still uses land-lines. It removes me from the world and makes me scratch my head. This wouldn't normally bug me, but a major part of the future storyline involves a character constantly asking people to be at his home so they can intercept important calls for him. Maybe I'm spoiled or just being snooty, but this really irked me. This, unfortunately, isn't the only thing that didn't work for me with this book.

I found the medieval storyline to be incredibly fascinating and exciting. A young woman, stuck in a different time, trapped not only by her distance in time, but by the restrictions of being a woman in that time-period. It was the only part of the book that really made me enthusiastic about continuing to read. However, the energy and excitement of the medieval storyline is constantly interrupted by the future storyline, which felt tonally very different. Where the medieval storyline is tense, scary, dirty, anxious, and exciting; the future storyline is slow, plodding and comical at times.

This difference in tone is really what kept me from enjoying the book. It felt less like two different stories in the same book, and more like two different books. There were very basic links between the stories, but not in a way that felt at all satisfying to me. Overall this just kept me from really throwing myself into the book and allowing myself to immerse myself and enjoy it.

The comic tones of the future storyline are quite funny at times, and I can see why so many people have enjoyed Willis' other book "To Say Nothing of the Dog" but when you match a comedic storyline with a serious and bleak storyline (like the black plague) as a reader, I don't know what to think or feel. And while I don't NEED an author to tell me what and how to feel, I definitely need a consistent tone from which to gather my impression of the book and story. For me, this book just didn't work.