Television Review: Supernatural (Seasons 1-5)

By all rights, Supernatural shouldn't have made it past a first season. It started off wobbly, without most of the mythology that became such a big part of the series later on. Initial episodes were primarily stand-alone, with the promise of a more overarching story. Each week Supernatural would shamelessly rip off the plot of a classic scary movie, cheerfully including various horror cliché’s. Some of these episodes were good, but a lot of them were decidedly 'blah', not hitting any home-runs in the plotting, writing or acting departments.

The set-up: Sam and Dean Winchester (played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) are brothers. As kids - Sam was a mere baby - their mother died mysteriously, or to be more precise: burst into flames while floating against the ceiling above Sam's crib. The brothers were dragged around by their father for years, who - looking for an explanation for the impromptu barbecue - turned into a hunter of demons and other infernal beasties. Sam opted out in his teens and enrolled in college, trying to build a normal life for himself, but at the beginning of the series he is dragged back into the family business. Cue the brothers hitting the road in their soon-to-be iconic Chevrolet Impala, looking for their dad and fighting the good fight as they go.

It's not until season two that things start to heat up - the mythology builds on itself and the cast of recurring characters grows a bit. Though the brothers always firmly remain the focus - the 'tough' wise-ass Dean a little more than his sensitive-but-with-a-major-dark-side brother - they also pick up a surrogate father in the shape of fellow ‘hunter’ Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver), giving the series more heart. By season four they even 'adopt' an Angel - yes, an actual Angel - called Castiel (Misha Collins) who starts off intimidating and ends up frequently hilarious, as he tries to interact with humanity.

Though Supernatural started out generic, it gained a distinct personality as it went (somewhere in-between The X-Files and Buffy - The Vampire Slayer), making it a pleasure to watch. The chemistry between the main cast didn't gel straight away, but grew solid over time. And the series became great at poking fun at its own silliness, mostly by way of Dean's sarcastic one-liners, but also through self-aware and occasionally postmodern scripting. At one point a writer turns up who is writing about the brothers’ adventures in the form of a series of pulp novels called Supernatural. (There is a complicated explanation for this, of course.) Consequently, Sam and Dean end up walking among fans of the book-series, during a convention where everyone is impersonating them. The Winchester brothers also come across online fan-fiction based on the books, labeled ‘Wincest’ - which is a phenomenon that, somewhat disturbingly, actually exists. Use your imagination to guess what it entails. To quote Sam: “These people are sick!” To be fair, the writers of the television series are partially to blame for the erotica, as a recurring joke throughout the series is that the brothers are mistaken for a gay couple. Further postmodernism ensues when the brothers leap into the bodies of two actors (called Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, of course), the stars of a television series called Supernatural. At one point during that episode, actual series creator Eric Kripke makes an on-screen appearance, only to get gunned down in slow-motion.

Over the seasons, the stakes have been raised higher and higher; by the end of season five the Winchesters have both already died at least once, but dying only slowed them down for a couple of episodes on each occasion. Things culminated in a battle between Heaven and Hell, the brothers getting caught at the center of things. It's not surprising to learn that this was supposed to be the ending for the series initially, but Supernatural still did so well it was renewed. Creator Kripke left the show, leaving executive producer Sera Gamble to figure out where to go next. Time will tell if the series has peaked, as it will be hard to beat the dramatic high of seasons four and five. For the moment though, the tongue-in-cheek-yet-serious adventures of the brothers, their substitute dad and the loopy Angel still make for compulsive viewing.

Game Review: Alan Wake

The first two words spoken by the narrator & lead of the X-Box game Alan Wake are ‘Stephen King’, which could be a respectful homage ór a plea to the writer to please not sue the company behind the game (Remedy Entertainment) for so obviously feeding off his ideas. In the game, a bestselling novelist with writer’s block and his girlfriend go on holiday to one of those small, typically American towns that reek of Twin Peaks. There are log-cabins, lumberyards, misty forests and – as it happens – there is an Evil force that lives off people’s creativity. Before long, Wake has a memory lapse, his girlfriend goes missing and shadowy figures that seem to have sprung right out of the pages of one of his own manuscripts are after him in a bad, homicidal way. It’s up to Wake to save his lover, the town and even the world, all while trying to retain his precarious grip on reality.

Mood and story are the main event in Alan Wake. It is a very polished game: it looks great, sounds great and it’s as atmospheric as survival horror games get. Like Silent Hill, Dead Space and The Suffering, this is the sort of game that needs to be played at night with the lights off and headphones on. You will be running through dimly lit streets, factories, abandoned buildings and miles of creepy forest and will soon learn to fear the sudden gusts of wind and mist that signal the arrival of packs of murderous, glowy-eyed rednecks, about to pour themselves at you from the shadows. The game is very clear about one thing: light is good, darkness is bad and the first can be used to beat the latter. Battle in Alan Wake entails pointing a flashlight at an enemy to weaken his bad mojo and then putting a well-aimed bullet or two into his head. Bullets and batteries for the flashlight are both in short supply, so some strategy and a little trial-and-error are necessary. There are also flash-bangs and flares, the first one doing a lot of damage in a short burst, the second one clearing an area around you for a while, handy when you’re in danger of being overwhelmed or want to clear yourself a path. Often the bad guys don’t stop coming and your only option is to fend them off while on the run. The game makes clever use of save points: you are constantly rushing towards the next pool of light – beneath a lamppost or inside a building – and reaching one doesn’t just save you, it also automatically saves your progress. Relief all around.

Manuscript pages – possibly written by yourself at some point – can be found all over the place as you go. They describe people you met or are about to meet and situations you already lived through or upcoming ones you hope you will survive. It effectively deepens your involvement in the story and builds tension – like when you find a page predicting you will face someone with a big chainsaw and then hear the dreaded sound start up in the dark a while later, remembering with a shock what is about to happen.

The original game has a somewhat ambiguous ending – which I won’t spoil – and the story continues in two downloadable titles: The Signal and The Writer. Narratively speaking the two just about cancel each other out, which was presumably done on purpose so someone could just finish the main game and then skip straight to the inevitable full sequel without feeling like they missed something in-between. These expansions get a bit more detached from reality and more playful: you can shine your flashlight on words to make them shimmer and transform them into the thing they signify. For instance: if you see the word ‘bridge’ floating about, you can light it up and let a bridge pop into existence. The game gets creative with this concept. At one point you are walking through a minefield of words, most of them trouble, trying to avoid touching them with your beam, at another you are besieged, running among hills that blast apart when you hit the word ‘light’ (or something similar), bathing the area in cleansing light from a nearby lighthouse.

Alan Wake is a great game for people who like a very linear, controlled experience. A sandbox-game this is not: you can explore areas a little at the risk of getting jumped by enemies, but you can’t get too far off course and there is just one way to go ultimately. Ammo is tightly managed: if you succeed in carrying over ammo from one save point to the next for a while – good for you. But the game makes a habit of regularly taking it all away in a cut-scene, forcing you to rebuild your limited arsenal.

Alan Wake takes itself pretty seriously for the most part, though there is room for humor and most of the characters are good for a laugh, such as Alan Wake’s loudmouthed agent Barry Wheeler and two elderly rockstars who used to be in Viking-themed band called ‘Valhalla’. Some of the more artificial gameplay elements stretch believability. Just who has been leaving stashes of guns, ammo, flares, flashlights and batteries all over the place? The game gives an explanation, but it seems a bit half-hearted. Downright silly and pointless are the coffee-thermoses you can find all over and collect. I am not sure who decided those were a good idea, but they challenge realism for no good reason. Speaking of which, there is one glitch in the animation that is scary but was likely not intended to be: the mouths sometimes look freaky when characters are talking. Especially the jaw of Alan Wake’s girlfriend eerily looks like that of a ventriloquist doll, limply bouncing up and down as she talks. Let’s hope they fix it for the sequel.

I am not sure where else they can take Alan Wake. The unique flashlight-plus-gun concept seems tapped out by the end of the game, so a thorough shake-up of the formula would be needed. And I wonder how much more playing with the line between fact and fiction they can do without the plot entirely disappearing up its own backside. But I had a great time experiencing this game, so I’m curious to find out.

Movie Review: In the Name of the King – a Dungeon Siege Tale

It has been a good long time since I saw a movie as massively, unintentionally cheesy as In the Name of the King. Lured into purchasing it on Blu-Ray as part of a batch offer, I already had my doubts about a film being marketed just on the basis of the lead having been in The Expendables. But seeing Jason Statham’s hunky face on the cover made me walk into the trap regardless: I’m just superficial that way. After the purchase, I took better look at the director and saw the name Uwe Boll, in very tiny print. It was then that I knew for sure I’d been had.

Uwe Boll is known for his ability to make bad movie adaptations of game franchises, such as Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and Far Cry. They are said to be generic and uninteresting at best, hilariously bad at worst. He once famously challenged his unflagging critics to take him on in the ring and settle their score man-to-man, apparently believing he could prove the quality of his work by punching a critic in the face. To be fair, based on his reputation I had always avoided his movies like the plague and had never given him a fair shake. But going by this movie, I should just have taken other people’s word for it and spared myself two hours of low-budget mediocrity. The whole project is po-faced, misjudged and wobbly in all aspects from acting and script to special effects. Even the passionless soundtrack conspires to makes things drag.

In the Name of the King – a Dungeon Siege Tale is based on a Role-Playing game I know nothing about and stars Jason Statham as Farmer, whose day-job is evident from his name. He has a son and a wife, but not for long, as soon they are both taken from him by the ‘Krug’, who look suspiciously like Trolls and were probably renamed to sound less generic. The Krug have a silly semi-gorilla walk with corresponding sounds, unconvincing bodysuits and never let you forget that there must be an actor inside, feeling very bad for himself. There is a magical mastermind pulling the Krug’s strings (the ever-evil Ray Liotta) and his plan is to take over the land by getting rid of the king (a strangely tightfaced and overly made up Burt Reynolds), with help from the king’s weakling nephew (Matthew Lillard, better known as Shaggy from the Scooby Doo movies). Not to spoil anything, but Farmer stops him. The end.

I have left out some other characters like a magus/magician (the elsewhere admirable John Rhys-Davies) and Farmer’s daddy substitute (the elsewhere fantastic Ron Perlman), but then none of them is especially memorable and they remain firmly 2D, if not 1D. One or two of the minor characters even risk travelling into negative space. It is the script’s fault that people don’t really say the things that would make the most sense in any given circumstance and that what does come out of their mouth sounds stilted, but since Boll is the producer and director, blame still lands on his plate. Watching the movie, I kept being tempted to reach into my television, yank out the script and do a quick rewrite. I also wanted to rewrite the beginning and get rid of a ‘twist’ that was probably intended as gritty and shocking, but really is just severely emotionally misjudged. It sets the wrong tone and shows that the makers are in denial about making a goofy fantasy action movie.

Even though In the Name of the King is very long and feels like it, somehow it doesn’t get around to putting in all the information you need to comprehend what is going on. For instance: there is a baffling group of semi-ninja warriors that just appear in the middle of a battle – on two occasions – without set-up or explanation afterwards. If only Boll had tightened up the story, got rid of some unnecessary characters and scenes, cut out about 30-45 minutes and used the extra budget to invest in a dialogue polish and better special effects… This might have enabled them to make the fight scenes look like more than just a live roleplaying session in the woods. On the other hand, this would probably have meant we would have had to do without the awesomely silly tree-people who swing around on vines and are able to use them to attack people by way of unconvincing computer graphics.

It’s a mystery how Uwe Boll keeps getting the chance to make more movies. There always seem to be people willing to invest some money in his projects – as a tax write-off, perhaps - and some actors willing to spend time hamming it up and chewing the low-budget scenery. I don’t understand why all of the at least somewhat known actors I mentioned didn’t take one look at the script and at Boll’s reputation and ran in the opposite direction. The sounds of agents getting fired must have been everywhere during and after the filming. Beefcake Statham fulfills the stoic hero part as best as he can, given the circumstances, but is a lot more fun in movies where he has a sense of humor than in flicks like this and The Transporter, where he is typecast as a frowning, one-note action man.

To end on a positive note… uhmm… well, I guess some of the computer-generated vistas are actually quite nice and the Blu-Ray picture quality is crisp and clean. That’s pretty much all I can come up with.

Despite this movie being a massive commercial flop, a sequel starring Dolph Lundgren is in the works, once again directed by Uwe Boll. God(s) help us all.

Television Review: Castle (Seasons 1 & 2)

Castle is like a box of chocolates. Not one of those where you don’t know what you’re going to get – far from it - but rather one filled with that one special kind of bon-bon you can’t stop eating ‘just one more’ of, even though it’s empty calories and it will make you feel bloated afterwards. (Yes, I’m gay.) It’s a very entertaining but very formulaic quirky crime-solving series, closely related to Bones and Psych.

In a rather precarious and unbelievable set-up for a continuing series, famous pulp-thriller writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) starts shadowing NYPD detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic). He has recently killed off his cash cow of a main character and is basing his new one (‘Nicki Heat’) on her. He is connected to people in politically high places and to keep them happy, the NYPD is allowing him to follow her around apparently indefinitely. It’s stated that he wants to make all the details in his book ‘authentic’ and this would explain why he needs to be around 24-7 for months on end. As time management goes, this is not the most efficient way of going about things, but since Castle helps Beckett unravel the tangled narrative behind each crime – there are no straightforward murders in this precinct - he proves useful and they grow ever closer.

Their cheery witticisms while hovering over a dead body can come across as somewhat insensitive, but playfulness is what this series is about. I doubt the NYPD deals with things like ‘death by gargoyle’, frozen corpses left lying around and naked, handcuffed, dead ladies covered in caramel sauce on a regular basis. If you are expecting hard-boiled and realistic, you will be disappointed. Though during the first couple of episodes Beckett states a few times that most crime shows are removed from reality and that Rick Castle will now experience how an investigation ‘really’ works, the series is soon employing shortcuts for the convenience of the plot and making your eyes roll. Investigations that would take a huge amount of time get magically condensed and after a complicated intrigue has been brought to light, there is always some evidence to support it – as luck would have it - even though it is often circumstantial and a prosecutor would have a tough time getting a conviction. This doesn’t matter much, as generally the killers are all too easily pushed into a confession. These groan-inducing moments that not only stretch believability but sometimes even fold it into an entertaining balloon animal, don’t spoil the fun, but you start to wonder about some convenient narrative crutches: when will murderers learn not to use their perfectly traceable credit-card to buy stuff they will use for their kill or in the vicinity of their prospective victim around the time of the murder?

The average episode follows this predictable structure: body gets found in odd circumstances - cute scene with Castle in his very expensive loft with sweet daughter and/or cohabitating eccentric mother – he gets called to the murder scene - he and Beckett interview a succession of suspects, buoyed by revelations, imagination and ever-present snippets of evidence – until a slightly more well-known tv-actor than the other interviewees/suspects from the first part of the episode turns out to be the killer. Engaging characters and dialogue keep the recipe from growing stale. Castle’s family set-up is on the verge of being too cute, but generally manages to charm you into submission. The ‘will they or won’t they’ romantic vibe between the two leads also keeps things interesting, though the series doesn’t seem to be in a rush to move this plot-point forward. Sensibly, perhaps, as series from the past have proven that there is really nowhere interesting to go once you couple up your leads (*cough* Moonlighting *cough*). Sure, you can have them get together and break them up maybe once and then still keep them circling each other, but the audience will lose patience. Did anyone really still want Ross and Rachel to even be on the same screen towards the end of Friends?

Nathan Fillion steals the show as a charming wise-ass, the kind of role he seems born to play, whether he turns out to be a space cowboy, a supervillain or a pulp fiction writer. However, the rest of the cast is equally game and a pleasure to watch. If you don’t mind the occasional ‘yeah, right’ moment and can appreciate fun shows that aren’t all that intellectually nourishing, the Castle crowd is a good one to hang out with. A warning about the whistled tune at the beginning of each episode: after watching a couple of episodes in quick succession, it might get stuck in your head. Forever.

Review (sort of): Mass Effect 1 & 2 (X-Box 360)

I have always been fascinated by interactive storytelling. I remember being a big fan of the Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone as a wee tyke. These fantasy or scifi-themed books would allow you to choose your own adventure, along the lines of: ‘If you want to check out the spooky hovel on your left, go to page 235. If you would rather head into the ominous cavern on your right, go to page 42.’ Looking back on it, it was pretty much just a paper version of the text adventures you could play on your pc. You’d be running around on a lofty mission with death lurking around every corner: a bad choice, a bad roll of the die, or just plain bad luck could have you flipping back to the last page you remembered going to before you ‘died’ (for this reason, I kept a meticulous cheat sheet with all the pages I’d visited). There were several endings for each adventure, both good and bad. At some point there was even an adventure which featured two books that crossed over and could be played with a friend. That sort of interactive complexity totally blew my mind.

If I had come across Mass Effect at that point in time, I think I might have died of shock. Mass Effect is a computer game trilogy of which the first two parts have come out so far (part one in 2008, part two in 2010). They aim to tell a complete story – a space opera in which you save the galaxy quite a few times - spread out over all three games. Unique is that you can carry over your self-modeled character from one game to the next and that the choices you make in one part of the story affects how the story will unfold in the sequels. Games with multiple endings and meaningful choices are nothing new, but in combination with the sheer size of the universe and the amount of malleable characters in it, it can’t fail to impress: it’s interactive storytelling on a massive scale. Interesting is the amount of optional story spread all around. You can talk to any number of people (or aliens) with interesting things to say, deepening the world around you. Or you can ignore most of that and just shoot things.

Admittedly, I have found that in reality BioWare (the company behind the games) cheated a bit: no matter what choices you made, you will end up ultimately in the same set-pieces with changes (major or minor) to dialogue and cut-scenes. Game 1 (minor spoiler) makes you choose between two team members: one lives, one dies. In game 2 you have a scene with the surviving one, but on a grander scale, it doesn’t matter much which of the two made it there. The attitude and dialogue options you get from certain characters may vary, but not in a very consequential way. And the main set-up for the second game, regardless of what happened in part one, is fixed: get enrolled by a morally dubious organization, gather team for vital mission, gain loyalty of team members (optional), upgrade ship and team (optional) and lead them on said ‘suicide’ mission. You can do all this following the way of the Renegade (a ‘goals justifies the means’ bad-ass) or as a Paragon (a morally upright goody-two-shoes): the difference is mostly in the dialogue, not in the follow-up. However, if you left certain characters – minor or major - alive in the first game, you might come across them in the second one and have a chat. They will ‘remember’ how you handled them during that first encounter.

If you skip the upgrades and loyalty missions, things will end badly, so although this is optional in theory, you sort of have to do both. But then, rushing through the game would be missing the point in any case: the emphasis on story and immersion is what makes Mass Effect special. The game tries to make the main missions have an urgent feel to them – the clock is ticking for the universe after all – but somewhat counter-intuitively, you have to ignore that push in the back and take your time to bounce from one side-quest to the next as much as you can, until the next ‘main story’ mission ends up being the only thing available to you. Given how rich the created universe is, the action parts can come off as filler in-between narration. There’s enough variation to keep you entertained, but the ‘beats’ of a mission tend to be the same: bits of story in between moments when you end up in large spaces with a puzzling amount of stuff lying around for no other apparent reason than to serve as cover for you while you fight off various baddies. End with a slightly larger confrontation and an emotional climax, then on to the next mission. A lot of the fun is actually in the random detail, such as overhearing ridiculous conversations, buying a pointless ‘space hamster’ or giving a ringing celebrity endorsement to every single store on a space station for a little discount until you hear your voice echoing everywhere: ‘I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel!’

Mass Effect has run-and-gun as well as RPG elements to it. The first game required a lot more inventory and ‘stats’ management than the second one does. As an adult with limited time, I greatly appreciated the boiling down of the concept to just the best bits: characters, action and adventure without too much micromanagement. I also appreciated Mass Effect gaining more of a sense of humor in the sequel, after the slightly too clinical part 1. The third one will apparently follow the same approach as part 2. I hope that the total of decisions you made in the first two games will have a bigger impact this time around. Ideally, not just the cut-scenes and dialogue but also the set-pieces leading up to the big climax(es) will be variable. However, I have a feeling that the tight production schedule of games would preclude the development time needed to make two essentially different second-halves for Mass Effect 3. In any case, it will be at the top of my to-buy list. While I appreciate the slightly geekier, RPG-driven sprawling stories and the atmosphere of a choice-heavy game like Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2’s sleeker, more polished approach to epic storytelling is – for me – the direction more games should be heading in. Should you dive in, make sure you start with the original Mass Effect though: things heat up in the sequel, but it’s just a waste to miss out on the beginning of this continuing story.

From Bored to Board

Games at the ABC, board or otherwise, by Steven

(written for the American Book Center Blog)

Reading is a great way to spend your free time, but can be a bit solitary. Gaming with others makes for a good change of pace, but a lot of digital gaming systems like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are focusing on online multiplayer games, so you still end up at home alone. More ‘gezellig’ is definitely inviting people over for some face-to-actual-face time around a table. Instead of cussing each other out over a microphone, you can eat, drink and be merry, while having a game experience together. There are different group dynamics you can go for: in some games you compete or actively try to trip up other players, in others you work together to achieve a common goal. So even if you are not particularly competitive, you can still have a good time with a board game.

Pandemic is a good example of cooperative play: you have to band together to stop a disease from spreading across the globe and dooming humanity. Surely a noble way to spend an evening.

There are a lot of games, with a broad range of themes, to be found at ABC, both in The Hague and on the first floor in Amsterdam. Some of them don’t require a board, just cards you can carry around with you for a game on-the-go. Our selection ranges from games that are easy to pick up and play in a couple of minutes to complex games that can last three hours or more. The last category (containing games like Arkham Horror and Battlestar Galactica – the board game) requires a bit of a time investment when it comes to figuring out the rules, but makes up for that by depth of play and these games can really drag you and your gaming group into a particular world.

If you are a bit daunted by the amount of games on offer, not sure which one to pick, you can of course ask our ABC crew for advice, but there are also sites that can help you find a game to suit you and your particular group of friends.The main site to go to for information is BoardGameGeek. They rate games, feature reviews and game session reports by players, have tons of themed ‘geek’ lists, post alternate rules if the original ones for a game are ‘broken’ and give vital statistics on a game, like: average play time, recommended amount of players, recommended age and so on.

There is also plenty to watch on YouTube: video reviews of games and tutorials for games, for people who find it easier to learn how to play this way than to read a manual. There are also flashy official trailers to be found for some games, if you want to hear the sales pitch. The most ‘present’ of reviewers is Tom Vasel, who has his own site The Dice Tower and a podcast. Seated in front of a wall of games, he gives articulate opinions. Another well-made YouTube feed of note, apart from ‘thedicetower‘, is ‘boardtodeathtv’. Additionally, there are somewhat less polished enthusiasts like ‘Grudunza’, ‘snicholson’, ‘theboardgamefamily’ and ‘Kerbster76’.

Currently in stock at The American Book Center are English versions of classics like Scrabble, Risk,Settlers of Catan, Monopoly and Carcassonne, but we also have games you might never have heard of:

Apples to Apples: A word game matching noun cards (i.e. “Abraham Lincoln”) to cards with adjectives (i.e.”frivolous”)
Fluxx: The card game with the continuously changing rules!
Munchkin: A very funny card game take on role-playing games.
Ticket to Ride: Connect your two train end destinations and try to monopolize as many routes as possible in the mean time.
Battlestar Galactica: Play as one of your favorite Battlestar Galactica characters and help save the last of humanity from the Cylon attacks. But who among you is secretly a Cylon themselves?
Axis & Allies: The World War II strategy game.

The following titles aren’t in our online database but should be in stock or available to order: Taboo,Zombie Dice, Harry Potter Hogwarts, Pandemic, Dungeon Quest, Arkham Horror and many others.

We also sell a lot of different Dungeons & Dragons guides, which help you set up a roleplaying session. And there are card sets for the well-known Magic: The Gathering card battle system.

If you can’t find a game you are interested in at our stores, ask at the register (first floor in Amsterdam or at The Hague), as we might be able to order it for you. If you want to get in touch with other gamers, come visit one of our game nights, visit Ducosim , join the Netherlands Roleplayer’s Guild or have a look atthis list of clubs.

Drop by on December 12th and game on!

Book Review: Under the Dome

Dome Spells Doom for Dum-Dums

Stephen King’s latest, Under the Dome, is a massive literary achievement, at least in actual size. At over a thousand pages, this book can sprain wrists over a prolonged reading session and fracture skulls when wielded with evil intent. It’s not King’s longest work, at least if you count his multi-volume Dark Tower saga as a continuous story, but it’s a long-term commitment for the reader all the same. On the American cover, thriller writer Lee Child blurbs: ‘The Best Yet, From the Best Ever’. While calling King the ‘best ever’ is in the realm of outright silly hyperbole, the question remains: is this King’s crowning glory?

Well, not quite, but at least it comes within a Green Mile of being it. The concept is as follows: an invisible barrier – a ‘dome’, if you will – plonks down over one of those small, typically American towns King loves to write about. From there on, things swiftly proceed to hell in a hand basket. After the first death toll (a plane and multiple cars crash into it, people and animals get sliced in two), unwise behavior of people under pressure soon leads to more fatalities. Then the semi-permeable barrier starts to cloud up because of pollution, the temperature slowly begins to rise under it and the clock is clearly ticking for all those who are trapped.

The major catalyst for most things Bad are selectman/used car salesman ‘Big’ Jim Rennie and his son. The first stops at nothing to gain control over the town as soon as external authorities are cut off, the second is just plain psychotic. The most important players on the side of Good are former military man/cook Dale Barbara and Julia Shumway, owner of the local newspaper. They have to find a way to counter ‘Big’ Jim, while at the same time figuring out what is keeping the dome in place and how to make it go away. Complicating matters, especially in the second half of the book, is a meth lab which also ends up getting locked in.

As almost every review has pointed out – a little gleefully – Stephen King must have been annoyed when this exact concept (‘small American town caught under see-through dome’) played out in The Simpsons Movie for laughs. King has claimed that it doesn’t bother him though, as the execution of the idea was completely unlike his version. King definitely came up with it earlier: 25 years ago he already took a stab at the first chapter for the book – which he actually used this time around, mostly intact – but he gave up because he didn’t know how to make it work.

He does make it work this time around, though it’s not a complete success-story. First, the good. As always, King’s prose should come with racing stripes painted on the side. You are sped along, invested in the characters and interested to see what will happen next. There is always something exciting going on, so you don’t really ‘feel’ the length of the story, except in actual weight in your hands. There is the occasional duff, awkward line or simile but those are quickly passed by and forgotten. All of this is true of most of King’s books, whether he is going for straight-up horror or something more cerebral and literary. The basic set-up of Good versus Evil while under the assault of some overarching bad situation is also typical King. There isn’t a whole lot of moral grey area in the book: people are pretty much bad or good, with only a few stragglers lingering in the middle. Interestingly, there are a lot of Jesus-lovin’, Bible-thumpin’ hypocrites on the bad side.

As a deeper allegory for the True Nature of Humanity or for global warming, Under the Dome doesn’t quite hit the bull’s-eye. King cheats too much with the specifics of the town that is portrayed. When it comes to keeping the action going, he probably was wise in having someone truly, insidiously Evil under the dome to speed up the decline of civilization, but psychologically more interesting might have been a slower slide into decay of a more morally ambiguous crowd. He cheats on the environmental aspect by having a meth lab complicate things, instead of stewing people in a prolonged local simulation of global warming. More grey area and a longer time-frame could have made for a more profound – if slower – story.

A general criticism of King tends to be that the denouements of his books don’t live up to the skilful build-up. Unfortunately, the same goes for this one. Without getting into specifics or spoiling too much: for a large part of the book, things seem to be building up to a direct confrontation between Rennie, Barbie and their respective posse. Though there are some scuffles and casualties, the two main men never really face off. The ultimate explanation for the dome is also a bit vague and silly but ultimately irrelevant to the meat of the story: human behavior under extreme circumstances.

Is it the best of King? Probably not. I prefer him a bit more creepy and my personal favorite is still It, which scared the pants of me, admittedly when I was a lot younger. And he has written books with more depth to them. But it is definitely a very entertaining read and should not be passed up by anyone who fancies sinking his mind into a big chunk of blood-speckled suspense.