Fixed Perspective

            Saul was picked for the drop team not long after the Protoss army was seen moving south of their base, leaving their defences open for a small window of time. The scan that revealed this lack of defence also revealed the Protoss’ technological advances, which were still meager in comparison to the intel that Flynn updated them with en route to the drop zone. That was all they knew on the Medivac, and it seemed good enough to let the worry slip to the back of Saul’s mind. Flynn was sitting next to Saul, looking out one of the windows. Not just looking, but staring. He was seeing something. Saul tapped him on the shoulder and Flynn brushed him off.

            “Shut up,” he muttered, “do you see that?”

            Saul did not have to look more than a few seconds to see what Flynn was talking about, and right away he could see why Flynn looked so worried. Usually he was never nervous going out on drops, but on those times they were stealth—this time was different. What Flynn saw was essentially nothing and everything at the same time. The air just outside the window of the Medivac looked different than the air around it. It looked as though someone poured a thick, clear liquid into water. Saul almost mistook it for the heat from the Medivac’s exhaust until he noticed the shape and, as Flynn used to say when he didn’t really get the joke until later, the penny dropped. Four little tendrils trailed behind what looked like a steel eye.

“It’s an Observer,” Saul whispered. Flynn nodded, and then finally broke vision of the thing outside the window. “Pilot, relay message to command, Observer spotted and it is following us. Do we still proceed?”

The pilot did as she was told, and with great speed. She knew the ramifications of a scouted drop ship. The Protoss has had time to prepare, which compromises the lives of the people in the Medivac, as well as the effectiveness of the mission. They could be running right into a massacre. Saul anxiously awaited the reply from the command center. His stomach shrunk when the pilot turned around.

“Copy that,” she said, removing the two fingers she had pressed to her ear. “Command says that the drop will continue as planned. They are planning an attack at the front which will stall their defences if they return.

Saul said nothing, but Flynn couldn’t contain himself. “But the scan went down hours ago, do you honestly think their base looks anything like it did then? No.”

“We have our orders, marine,” the pilot said. “Our infantry is prepared for most of their ground forces.”

She was right about that. The three Maurader units were equipped with concussive shells that slowed them down and gave the marines some distance. But it all didn’t really matter if they were shot down before they even were dropped off.

 The cloaking field on the Observer was similar to the one that Saul once saw tested on one of their Banshees, a ground-assault air ship, but of course it looked far better. This was something Saul judged based on how close he came to not seeing the Observer at all. That worry that he let slip to the back of his mind was back again, and now it was scraping around in his head. He wondered if Flynn was feeling the same and then decided that he was based on the way Flynn was repeatedly tapping the side of his gun with his thumb. The nervous tick of a man who is afraid to die. Saul imagined that Flynn was thinking about what he would lose if these are his last moments alive, and honestly there wasn’t much. They were both prisoners, only serving to lessen their sentences; Flynn was essentially going back to base—probably to do another drop later the next day. Things just worked that way. You break the law and it breaks you back, and it definitely broke Flynn. Saul looked out for him for that reason—Flynn was broken and Saul picked up the pieces when he wasn’t looking. Saul realized that he would lose that job, that responsibility even, and Flynn would lose him.

The pilot turned around again. “Approaching drop zone, all personnel prepa—

A loud crack blasted through the ship, followed by several direct hits on the starboard side. The Medivac rocked back and forth and for a moment Saul felt like he was on an amusement park ride, holding onto the metal bars so that he was safe. The feeling passed just as the next round of fire hit the Medivac, this time causing a breach up near the front of the ship. The pilot had to shield her eyes from the sparks that spat out of the control console.

            “Taking evasive action. What’s shooting us!?” The pilot asked the question to anyone who would listen. Judging by the sparking now spewing out of the cockpit, Saul guessed it was addressed to them. Flynn looked out the window and the horror in his eyes was enough to make Saul laugh. Sometimes it was all you could do.

            Flynn pushed himself away from the window, past Saul and into the space in the middle of all the seats. “Phoenix! You need to drop us or we all die.” And as if those were the magic words, the doors behind them opened.

            The fall was a short one, but Saul knew it would hurt. He landed as he was trained to land, but he could feel the bone in his left shin get that much more brittle. If it had broken, the marine suit would do its best to support him, but it wasn’t much. He would need to limp for the rest of this mess, at least until he got back to base if not for the rest of his life.

            The Phoenix above them was joined by a second one and they continued firing at the Medivac. More marines and Maurader units were still in there, trying to unload. Flynn was already firing at one of the Pheonixes, depleting its shield reserves. Saul was about to join in when the Medivac above them erupted in a ball of fire and burning metal. Debris rained down overtop of them, and one of the engines came down on top of one of the Maurader units, killing him instantly. One minute he was there, the next Saul only saw the engine. It was only he, Flynn, and one other marine remaining, one of the recruits from the expansion. They were all shooting at the same Phoenix, inflicting hull damage. Saul heard Flynn screaming in either fear or anger, but probably both, as he fired almost blindly into the air. The other marine took a few steps forward and was surrounded by a blue aura that was at the end of a beam emitted from the damaged Phoenix. The marine turned around to say something to Saul, but Saul couldn’t hear a word of it. It was like someone took a remote and turned him on mute. Saul could make out one word, though, one word that was being repeated over and over again, each time becoming more and more intensified. The word was “Help.”

            The marines feet began lifting off the ground, and in the next moment he was in the air at the same height of the Phoenixes themselves, Saul could hear him screaming even over Flynn’s continuing gunfire. The damaged Phoenix’s last shot was at the marine, and it caused him to completely disintegrate in a mist of blood and some larger pieces Saul didn’t want to try and identify. Saul realized he had been frozen this whole time, and only then began firing at the damaged Pheonix. It exploded in a bright blue blaze. The other Phoenix, being useless alone against ground infantry, flew off back to base.

             Half an hour after the crash, Flynn and Saul could still see the Medivac smouldering away in the distance, waxing and waning in a black socket of charred snow. They stopped a moment to look, and Saul made a mental note not to do it again. The arm of smoke that reached out into the sky from the wreckage might as well have been waving the Protoss forces in. Surely they saw the two marines being dropped off just before the explosion, and of course that meant that they would send a small group to clean them up. Time was not something they could afford to use if it did not have to do with moving further away from the crash site. They already had been given orders to retreat to the Xel’Naga tower and he did not want to waste time taking in the scenery of the place where he could have been blown to bits with the rest of the drop team. He turned away, being sure to pull Flynn back to reality as well—he too was staring.

            The two made it to the Xel’Naga tower without any hindrances. Even Saul was able to keep up with Flynn even though he could feel pieces of bone floating around his shin. It was a pain he never felt before. One he could deal with, but also one he knew would probably never leave him.

            “Are you okay?” Flynn asked, taking rest against a rock. He wouldn’t dare actually touch the tower, there was something about it that looked unsafe. There was a low but audible buzz coming from it, as it were charged with something powerful. The sound tore through Saul’s mind.

            “As okay as it gets, I suppose.”

            “Reinforcements are coming soon. I think we can…”

            Saul stopped listening right then because of something he saw just to the left of Flynn’s head. It wasn’t much at first, but it was enough to completely freeze him where he stood. Even if he had the time, he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to warn Flynn of that same liquid-like air swirling around behind him. Swirling around and getting bigger.

            Flynn continued for a few more seconds before he suddenly stopped talking. Saul thought that it looked like what happened when you had an epiphany mid-sentence. “The penny dropped,” Flynn used to say when he got a joke late. This time, Saul knew it was nothing like that. There was also a sharp shhhwipe sound that happened just before Flynn had that last epiphany.  Saul saw a trail of blood snake out from the side of Flynn’s mouth. As it dripped down, Saul took a step backward. More blood started pouring out of the midsection of Flynn's marine suit, and soon there was a line of it starting at the right shoulder and ending at the left side of his waist. Flynn’s body split at that line, the top half slipping off and landing against the tower (apparently it is safe to touch the towers, after all), his head looking up at Saul. The penny dropped, Saul thought, and that same thickly air started moving closer and closer to him.

            

Thankee sai, Blaine, you speak true.

Things like that have been flashing in and out of my head like near-dead light bulbs as of late. Lines from that incredible series that I'm only five books into just keep coming up. I was actually happy that I listened to a lot of the second book on CD, it gave me a voice to read Roland's lines in. And those four words that ended a chapter late in the third novel will forever be a holy fucking shit moment for me; "It was a door."




I guess that reading has been my main hobby this year; I think I've read more books this summer than I have in my whole life, if you want the truth. Usually my take in is about four to five books a year, if that. If that. I would be hard-pressed to get through a 400 pager within a month, really. This year I had a good job that allowed me to get some solid reading time in when things got slow, so I just decided to read. Life wasn't going all that well, anyway, so any other world was exceptionally better than mine. I liked the way the stories were told, and it made me read things differently. More closely, I suppose. Something about the way Stephen King divulges that crucial piece of information in such a way that makes it our little secret instead of this big blaring announcement that something has happened in the story.


What I like most about reading is how personal it gets. Have you ever read a book and somehow felt that you were the only one who has read it? It's just like hearing a good band and then not telling anyone about it because you want that band to be "yours". Same thing with books. There are two reasons why I hardly tell people what I'm reading: the first is that I don't really think they care unless they ask, the second is that I secretly don't want them to oh-so-happen know the book, and then tell me about a part I haven't reached yet--or worse, a part I've passed but didn't pick up on. So for example this Dark Tower series, which is extremely in depth and complex but at the same time quite simple. If someone were to tell me something about what's at the top of the tower, I don't think I'll really care, but when I finally get to that part I'll still feel a little deflated. Wouldn't you? The same wouldn't be true for a movie. Ruin the ending, I don't care. Films are designed to entertain you all the way through, not just some twist ending. That's why Shamalyamanaman's are so crap. With books (and for the sake of content let's just stick with the Dark Tower series), it's more about the ride. It's more about those finite details that make the setting leap out at you. That's why I read. That personal picture we all make of something is what's most special about reading. To me, Roland the gunslinger looks and sounds a certain way. And no, it's not the audio book guy, though I do occasionally think of his raspy voice when I read. I know it's not that voice anymore. What I do know is that it's like no one else's version, and that's enough for me. Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chalmers and Oy will always be superstars of fiction in my mind, and what's funny about that is that I was doubtful they ever would be.

Since this is sort of a rebirth for this blog, I figure I should get out of the way a few plans I have in store for it. I'd rather not review stuff anymore, because I find more often than not that I'm merely repeating what I read on the other review sites. So I'm going to stick to the simple what's-on-my-mind kind of ideal, and hopefully spout off something interesting enough to read. No stories, either, but I think I'll still discuss what I'm writing because sometimes I figure things out for myself that way. Also, video games and stuff I learned on the internet (an idea I stole from TV writer Mark Verheiden's blog, which I still read every day).

Speaking of reading every day, I was recently disgusted by the changes to Digg.com and am now without an interesting news site. Sean suggests Reddit, which I'm lead to believe is the biggest rival to digg. Perhaps I'll try it out, but I'm open to suggestions on the subject. I used to spend hours on Digg over the course of the day, now... meh, I'd rather be doing something else. Like reading on the balcony over the sound of light traffic. Last week I read "Suffer the Little Children" by Stephen King. It took twenty minutes, maybe thirty with a few smoke breaks, but it was a nice refreshing horror read. It's from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, a collection of short stories. I just bought it in hardcover for 3 bucks from the Thrift Store, what a steal. I gave my paperback to Sean, I think.

If there's one thing I've learned this year about writing, it's how to properly start a sentence. Okay, maybe not properly, but the change I saw most was that my writing didn't read like it was coming out of a Morse code telegram writer anymore. While reading, I try to take note of different ways to begin a sentence, as I've found myself continually trapped in the whole " " sort of formula. And if I'm feeling gutsy, then I would switch John turned the car around when he saw the body on the shoulder of the road into something like When he saw the body on the shoulder of the road, John turned the car around. The same sentenced, just switched around. It makes it look different but it doesn't really do anything. Sometimes it even makes it sound worse. Take this passage from Stephen King's Wizard and Glass: He went back to his clean up operations. Susan stood back watching him for a while, feeling uneasy and out of sorts with herself. Now that the note had been successfully been passed, she felt an urge to ask Sheemie to give it back, to scratch out what she had written, and to promise to meet him. If only to see those steady blue eyes again, staring back at her. "Now that..." and "If only..." are the two I would like to point out, obviously. The first one in particular is in the present tense within a passive structured narrative. I like that he uses that because it gives that storyteller vibe. Like someone is actually saying this to you instead of making it sound all high and mighty. But starting a sentence with One of them backed away... or These latter cries were heard the next room over... or Blood--along with a few drips of beer--began to roll down his cheeks... are all without the normal subject-does-verb agreement, and all are from a single page of the book mentioned above. One page, man. I think it has a lot to do with imagining the sentence and what it is actually doing. For the blood sentence, I think I would be tempted to write how the person felt the blood pouring down his cheeks, but the problem would be that a) it might not be from his perspective, so how would the perspective-guy know he felt the blood, and b) it requires that to be a feeling felt by the character, which there really isn't time for in a bar fight (scene was in a bar fight) or any other situation where blood might be pouring down your cheeks. Instead, King simply made the blood the subject of the sentence, and to splif with the guy whose face it was on! Reader should know that anyway, right? Worked out nice, I'd say.


I'm stuffed from an amazing thanksgiving dinner, so I think I'll relax and watch a movie.

Until next time, happy reading!

Even before the Falcon D9 fighter could reach the end of its dispatch tube, Morgan already doubted everything the flight simulator had taught her in training. Every angle seemed more defined, every bump was more severe, and the leveling was much more responsive. Not sensitive, but definitely more responsive. The ride through the tube lasted a total of six seconds, but the narrow tunnel made it seem like ages. She knew that he slightest nudge against the control stick could tilt the wing just enough to clip something and end the training run before it even had a chance to start.

    Somewhere else within that six seconds, part of her training came back to her and actually made sense; the lock function. She lifted her thumb and clipped in a small black button. The light that up to this point had been red now turned a bright green. A small screen that monitored her level beeped, almost in satisfaction, when the Falcon panned out right along a center line and stuck there.
The end of the tunnel was coming closer, but Morgan could only tell this by the red neon lighting that lined the top, bottom and sides of the launch tube. They blinked in a forward motion, and then dropped off at a black end. Morgan thought they looked like the individual strands creating the number on a digital alarm clock.
   Before she could have another thought, the Falcon burst out the side of the base ship with a gasping airish sound of the last oxygen escaping into nothing. Though crowded by the seams of the cabins windows, Morgan couldn’t help but stare at the vastness—as well as the emptiness—of space. It was, after all, her first live training-op. She had moments like these in the past, but they were all in the company of others or very short lived. She never had a moment to take it in for herself and now this was it, even if it lasted just a few seconds. Her eyes instinctively looked past the orbiting space stations, of which there were no more than half a dozen in her view, and into the incredible blanket of stars which shined brilliantly in never the same pattern. She understood now, above all other moments with the stars that they were indeed out of reach. Stars had a way of simultaneously being two feet and two billion light years away, depending on the way she thought about it. Now Morgan never felt so far away from them, and it was that thought alone that made her feel like the smallest and most insignificant spec in reality. 
   If her training had come to her in full, Morgan would have remembered to check for her training pilot on HUD ping navigation system; instead she twisted her head to her right and indeed saw her training pilot exiting his own launch tube. Morgan could see his confidence even in his flight, smooth and flawless. He broke slightly to get closer to Morgan’s D9. When he was good and steady, Captain Flynn looked over and gave a tilt of the head.
   “Not what you thought it would be, right?” Flynn said over the wireless, and Morgan could hear the smile in his tone. She could picture that smile very well, especially the way his scruff seemed to act as definition rather than rugged laziness. She figured it was that smile that made her say yes to the early training-op. Maybe not even the smile, maybe it was him. Captain Flynn and his convincing smile.
   “No, definitely not,” Morgan said, momentarily forgetting which button activated the intercom.    “Simulator didn’t prove anything, I just don’t want to be the next example, you know?” She giggled a little but made sure that her thumb was off the intercom button for it.
   “The simulator is a control hub with a video game plugged into it; I haven’t liked that thing since we installed it. Are you still locked in?” He asked, referring to her levelling function.
“Affirmative. Should I let go?” Morgan glanced at the bright green light.
“No, not yet,” Flynn said almost immediately. “In a few seconds, we’ll go together. You’re going to feel a pull when it happens.”
   “A pull?” Morgan asked, tracing back everything she ever learned about fighter pilot training but not even coming across the word. “From where?”
    A few seconds of silence passed, and with each of them Morgan wondered more and more if she had asked a stupid question. Flynn came to her ear again through a mess of static that calmed down after the first word.
   “When you level, the thrusters are constantly working to make sure you stay in the position you locked up in. So when you unlock, the thrusters stop. Once they do, you’ll feel like you’re being pulled in a direction. Bottom line is to keep moving forward to maintain level.”
Morgan nodded, half-knowing that no one was there to see it. “Unlock then go, roger that.” It was her first time saying something like that, and she smiled when she did.
   “On my mark…” Flynn uttered, “three… two… one… mark.”
Morgan clipped off the level lock and instantly began twisting to the right. If Flynn hadn’t already been slightly in front of her, she probably wouldn’t have noticed against the blackness. She gave the rear thrusters rocket a push, and it reacted like a sensitive gas pedal in a car, pushing her back in her seat with inertia.
   “Well done,” Flynn said as they cruised along together, banking slightly to their right and bringing into view the tail end of their base ship and putting out of view the orbiting space stations, which Morgan could now identify as botanical hubs. “So from here on out, it’s like that video game in the simulator.”
   “I thought you hated the simulator?” Morgan asked. As she looked to her right at Flynn’s D9, she could see the projectile hatches popping open, then sliding out to the side to make room for an over-sized launcher that looked too big to be a turret and too small to be a cannon.
   “I never said different,” he said, “but if you can simplify it down to a point and click interface, you’re sittin’ pretty. Copy that?”
   “Copy that, Captain.”
   “Now get in front of me a little, arm up.” As it came through the intercom, Flynn was already dropping behind Morgan’s field of view, but he wasn’t far off according to her HUV.
    The jitters had passed, mostly. That much she knew. Flynn was behind her and she was able at least momentarily regain some of her composure.
   “I’m going to fire out some drones. They’re going to jet out several clicks, acquire you as a target, and attack. They can’t kill ya but they can bang you up something good. I don’t have turrets on this Falcon, so I can’t help you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.” He laughed. Morgan smiled. “Avoid, gain advantage, and eliminate, copy that?”
   Standard level 3 training-op, Morgan thought, something you’ve aced a million times… in a video game. She took in a breath, and started feeling the confidence she had in her hands not forty seconds before drip away.
   “Private Taul, do you copy?” Flynn repeated, and Morgan was all there again.
   “Copy. Fire when ready.”
    Without any hesitation or confirmation, Morgan saw Flynn release three drones from both of the oversized launchers, two from the right and one from the left. They popped out with a thunk, and then ignited their own thrusters and sped off into the distance.
Morgan couldn’t have followed them if she tried, they were moving almost four times her speed. She could, however, track them both visually as well as with her HUV, where the three drones appeared as blinking red Xs. She watched as the drones turned and changed direction, blazing their way toward her in a triangle.
   She opened fire. The first few shots were off target by an embarrassingly large margin, but she corrected almost perfectly in the ones that came after and obliterated two of the drones. They halted and exploded in a small flash that was gone almost as soon as it was there.
   The third drone she lost in those flashes, and for a second her heart was still with anticipation and fear, and then resumed its rhythm as Morgan spotted the third drone as it fired at her. The blue beams it shot were weak, that she could tell right away, but they were the equivalent of being hit with a hammer through a phonebook. She rattled in her seat as three streams of blue connected with the aft wing, letting out a scream she tried to stuff back down her throat.
   “You bitch!” She yelled, and somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of what Flynn might say if he heard that.
    Morgan and the drone blazed past each other, and Morgan pulled a huge file out of her training and commanded her D9 into a somersault and boosted her thrusters toward the drone who was now going the same direction as she. She fired as it started making its turn.
    Nothing.
   She looked to aft and saw the turret sparking off shards of light that hurt her eyes. She averted them and was met with a monitor that portrayed her wings as two red flashing problems.
   “Flynn, nothing’s working!” She yelled into the intercom. “Repeat, Flynn, nothing—ah!” Sparks flew on the inside of the cabin, for a split second shrouding her in bright capsules of fire. After the somersault she had decelerated considerably, and was now at relative cruising speed. She shoved the stick forward.  Nothing. She gasped, staring at the drone burrowing toward her. It was going to smash right into her.  This was going to be one of those accidents. She was going to be the next example. Flynn was in a miming panic, motioning something with his hands and mouthing words she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t figure it out, she was frozen. She wouldn’t know what he was saying if he yelled it in her ear.
    The drone was coming, it wasn’t stopping. They weren’t meant to stop, just be stopped. And the only thing that was going to stop it now was the window of her cabin. Then it occurred to her, the pull. She could even see it in Flynn’s silent words. The pull.
    She clipped in the levelling button, felt a jolt of steadiness, then unclipped the button. Her D9 twisted with the pull, but Morgan knew it wasn’t going to be enough, the drone would clip her wing at least.
    And it did.
    The drone bounced off the underside of Morgan’s wing and spun off and away, but the damage was enough to rupture its casing. The drone bled a red blaze and then vanished into a flash.
    Morgan sat there stunned for a few seconds, and then giggled.
  “Nice, Mo, smooth,” she said to herself, and burst out laughing.
    Flynn’s D9 ascended into view. He was giving a thumbs up, which Morgan as delighted to return. He held out his hand as if to ask her to get ready. Morgan watched Flynn’s thrusters push him forward into her, and when their ships intertwined, they moved as one back to the base ship.
   This must be the push, Morgan thought, and thanked Captain Flynn with her best impression of his convincing, safe smile.

I've never read a book over 700 pages in length. I came close a couple times with Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, and Duma Key, but on the whole I try to stick to the smaller books. Sometimes I think it has something to do with me holding the unabridged and uncut paperback copy of The Stand somewhere back in the fifth grade. Wait, was it uncut back then? Either way, the book was massive, and not being much of a reader back then, I think I only got through about half when I gave up. The bible-thin pages were enough to turn a lot of people away, to be honest. Like I demonstrated at a recent game-session with some friends, opening up the first pages to a beast of a novel is like standing at sea level with your head tilted up in a vain attempt to see the top of K2.

I read Under the Dome in stages. Seasons, if you will. Scribbled in the inside of the hardcover is a Christmas note from my mother, dated 2009. I don't think I read much of it right away, maybe the first few chapters to see what it was like, but the thinness in my left hand verses the weight in my right as I held the book was all the discouragement I needed. Later in 2010, I picked it up again and trucked through to about the four hundredth page. It was good. Very good. Right away it was clear that any similarity to the Simpsons Movie was almost non-existent. To think that I was actually afraid of that becoming a problem seems almost laughable now.

Through the reading, I kept thinking of the title. Under the Dome. It really said a lot more than those three words. Lately I've started to think more about what the story is about than what's in the story. Obviously not all the time, but sometimes seeing the forest instead of the trees can be helpful. I found myself always wanting to know what the people outside the Dome were doing. In the end I was quite glad not knowing about that kind of thing, and I reminded myself of that each time I thought of the title.

For a 1100 page monstrosity, the book had surprisingly little fat. Sure, some of the scenes could have been left out, particularity one of the town's riots and maybe a few confrontations, but even then it would be a hard thing to accomplish without stretching the tale too thin. Without re-telling the plot, the story revolves around the town under the Dome, mainly Dale "Barbie" Barbara and Big Jim Rennie, who are the protagonist and the antagonist, respectfully. Rennie is probably the only one in town who likes the Dome, as it's the only thing helping him strengthen his dictorial stranglehold on the town. As hearts sink and the body count rises, it's mostly up to a handful of townsfolk (the ones who can see through Rennie's beloved Christian demeanor) to put an end to it.

But what about the Dome? There was still this thing, this enormous invisible barrier between them and the outside world. What I liked about this part of the book was the mystery. The Dome is explained. Not completely, but it's explained. And take it from a guy who just closed the back cover not forty minutes ago; it's not what you think it is. Being a Lost fan, I'm always longing for a good sci-fi enigma, and this one didn't disappoint. Physically, we get a good sense of what the Dome is. Spray water at it from one side, a fine mist comes out the other. It's not air-tight, in other words, but it's damn close. Soon the environment takes a toll, and the Dome started picking up the fine film of life: pollen, smoke, pollution. Eventually, the stars and moon have a pinkish hue to them as they hang in the night sky. The mental side of it, or rather the rational side, is almost vacant. Almost. Personally, I don't mind, but there were a lot who wanted to know why the Dome was brought down, and where it came from. You get some answers, but like any good Lost episode we are left with that feeling of I get it... sort of. Maybe that`s just me.

I'm only a book and 50 pages into the Dark Tower series, but every time a number came up it always seemed to add to 19. How cool is that for all you DT junkies? I'm sure there is a lot more than just numbers lying around, as King's non-DT novels all seem to encompass at least a little from Roland's dreary wasteland.

I enjoyed my time with this book, and it's the first time I've ever read anything so late into the night. Like that anticipation we all felt before the finale of Battlestar Galactica, or that wrenching and twisting sensation in our bellies as we were about to find out who was in the Lost coffin, Under the Dome chimes in with a whole new feeling of awe. It really is that good.