(no subject)
I, like many (I suspect), have a serious love-hate relationship with Stephen King. I certainly admire him as one of the greatest storytellers around, and I really do love his narrative voice and general way with words. Like many, however, I tend to take a lot of offense at his endings. The man's a genius at setting up compelling scenarios and really exposing the darkest sides of man, etc, but more often than not he writes himself into a corner and employs agonizing deus ex machina cop outs to end the story. Okay, whatever, it's frustrating as a reader to get involved in a book only to be bitch slapped by the ending. At least the story was interesting and the narration compelling.
However, I get the feeling I'm fighting a losing battle with "Under the Dome." Again, interesting set-up, great pace, lots of little side plots weaving in and out to really round out the story. However, I'm really struggling with the characters. I can deal with a bad ending on occasion. But the characters in this epic tome are painfully one dimensional, and that's something that I have to deal with for the entirety of the book. This book would be the first thing I'd recommend to someone who wants to know what a "Mary Sue" character is. Because this book is just one big collection of flat, stereotypical, one-note people. The good guys are living saints (even if they are mistrusted and martyred just because they didn't grown up in the Small Town in question), and the villains are almost comical in their evilness. I like flawed heroes and sympathetic villains, I like to have some gray areas-- I have a very hard time reading fiction that's laid out to be so very black and white because it simply isn't interesting. C'mon, make me question someone's motives, let me understand the antagonist's point of view. Let the protagonist screw up every now and then, let him make a mistake somewhere along the line.
At least make the evil character interesting. Make me hate him or fear him because I can see a little bit of myself in him. I've got a dark side, we all do; but I'm reading Rennie's scenes and even Junior's scenes and the other creeps in the story, and not a single one of them has even the remotest relatable quality. There's not one single little bit of redemption or humanity to be found in ANY of them. And they're not scary or intimidating, they're just annoying. I just want to slap them. Or put them in time out. Randall Flagg was pretty one dimensional, but he was still fucking scary as hell. He was a real Villain's Villain. Rennie and Junior? I just want to kick them in the shins.
I'm enjoying "Under the Dome" because for all of the characterization (at least, the one element of each character that's presented), it is actually an interesting read. I really do enjoy the way he writes, and this is a book I've been hard-pressed to put down at times. But the characters are starting to really piss me off with their cardboard personalities, and I can just see signs of all of the little plots being forced into a bottleneck and imploding in a disappointing finish.
However, I get the feeling I'm fighting a losing battle with "Under the Dome." Again, interesting set-up, great pace, lots of little side plots weaving in and out to really round out the story. However, I'm really struggling with the characters. I can deal with a bad ending on occasion. But the characters in this epic tome are painfully one dimensional, and that's something that I have to deal with for the entirety of the book. This book would be the first thing I'd recommend to someone who wants to know what a "Mary Sue" character is. Because this book is just one big collection of flat, stereotypical, one-note people. The good guys are living saints (even if they are mistrusted and martyred just because they didn't grown up in the Small Town in question), and the villains are almost comical in their evilness. I like flawed heroes and sympathetic villains, I like to have some gray areas-- I have a very hard time reading fiction that's laid out to be so very black and white because it simply isn't interesting. C'mon, make me question someone's motives, let me understand the antagonist's point of view. Let the protagonist screw up every now and then, let him make a mistake somewhere along the line.
At least make the evil character interesting. Make me hate him or fear him because I can see a little bit of myself in him. I've got a dark side, we all do; but I'm reading Rennie's scenes and even Junior's scenes and the other creeps in the story, and not a single one of them has even the remotest relatable quality. There's not one single little bit of redemption or humanity to be found in ANY of them. And they're not scary or intimidating, they're just annoying. I just want to slap them. Or put them in time out. Randall Flagg was pretty one dimensional, but he was still fucking scary as hell. He was a real Villain's Villain. Rennie and Junior? I just want to kick them in the shins.
I'm enjoying "Under the Dome" because for all of the characterization (at least, the one element of each character that's presented), it is actually an interesting read. I really do enjoy the way he writes, and this is a book I've been hard-pressed to put down at times. But the characters are starting to really piss me off with their cardboard personalities, and I can just see signs of all of the little plots being forced into a bottleneck and imploding in a disappointing finish.