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Comments
Bev, you've got that right! It's almost impossible to hold in one hand.
John
John
I finished this morning. Good book! Now to the review...
Great on both counts. Look forward to your review.
Available while supplies last.
$200.00 plus shipping and handling
This collector's edition of Under the Dome, Stephen King's tour-de-force new novel about a Maine town suddenly cut off by an invisible, impenetrable Dome, has a belly band around the jacket, a stamped case, four-color printed endpapers, 27 part title illustrations of characters in the book drawn by renowned New Yorker cartoonist Matthew Diffee, and a ribbon marker. The edition also contains a deck of 27 special collector's cards featuring the Diffee caricatures. Printed on specialty paper. Shrink-wrapped.
Cover to be unveiled 10/05/09
They got their answer Thursday, when Random House announced “now that all of our security and logistical issues surrounding the e-book of ‘The Lost Symbol’ have been resolved, the e-book will be released simultaneously with the hardcover on Sept. 15.” Random House’s Doubleday imprint is printing 5 million hardcover copies for the U.S.
If Random House had refused to make “The Lost Symbol” available for the Kindle it would have likely set the stage for a major clash. Amazon has said publicly that its Kindle customers want the e-book edition of new titles available on the same day that physical books are put on sale. Some in publishing suggested that Amazon might have responded by disengaging the “buy” button for the physical edition of Mr. Brown’s book. (An Amazon spokesman noted via email that the company has a “longstanding policy of not commenting on our interactions with publishers.”)
Instead, it’s business as usual. Few books have such clout. The next major potential challenge to Amazon’s $9.99 pricing policy for Kindle best-sellers appears to be Stephen King’s massive novel “Under the Dome,” which is being published by Simon & Schuster’s Scribner imprint on Nov. 10 with a $35 retail price. The publisher’s most senior executives are discussing the matter but haven’t yet made a decision.
The novel’s plot follows the activities in an American town after it is sealed off by a mysterious invisible force field.
The agency will target existing fans and new readers to the author and will play on elements of the book’s content while ‘emphasising the craftsmanship of the writing’.
Unity co-founder Gerry Hopkinson said that the agency has developed a ‘unique concept that will work across multiple platforms to really bring the launch to life’.
The agency will report to Hodder & Stoughton head of consumer marketing Laurence Festal.
>>> Source
On an October Friday night during what would be Obama’s second term, a clutch of local toughs, unfortunately led by the son of the town boss, gang up on Iraq War vet Dale Barbara, lately short-order cook at the Sweetbriar Rose. So he’s hoofing it out of town the next bright morning. An old groundhog galumphs along the highway, and a small plane buzzes overhead. Suddenly, the animal’s in two bleeding pieces, and the Seneca V’s explosively colliding with nothing Barbie (as friends call him) can see. A barrier, initially invisible, has fallen precisely on the boundaries of Chester’s Mill, Maine, and penetrated deep into the ground. It keeps all but wisps of air and trickles of water out, but everyone and everything in. The week accounted for by the succeeding 1,000-plus pages doesn’t go well at all. Indeed, it culminates in an actual holocaust because of the machinations of the aforementioned town boss—pious, covert sociopath Big Jim Rennie, who sees in Chester’s Mill’s involuntary quarantine an opening for covering the tracks of his meth-making business and blaming any attendant violence on Barbie. King keeps a huge cast very busy in his third-biggest novel ever, but most of its members are flimsily realized. However, his explanation for the dome has a prestigious pedigree (Shakespeare’s King Lear), and his way with mayhem remains nonpareil.
— Ray Olson
Annotation
The jacket concept for UNDER THE DOME originated as an ambitious idea from the mind of Stephen King. The artwork is a combination of photographs, illustration, and 3-D rendering. This is a departure from the direction of King’s most recent, illustrated covers.
In order to achieve the arresting image for this jacket, Scribner art director Rex Bonomelli had to seek out artists who could do a convincing job of creating a realistic portrayal of the town of Chester’s Mill, the setting of the novel. Bonomelli found the perfect team of digital artists, based in South America and New York, whose cutting edge work had previously been devoted to advertisement campaigns. This was their first book jacket and an exciting venture for them. “They are used to working with the demands of corporate clients,” says Bonomelli. “We gave them freedom and are thrilled with what they came up with.”
This CGI (computer generated imagery) enhanced image looks more like something made for the big screen than for the page and is sure to make a lasting impact on King fans.
The multiple elements of this jacket art lend themselves perfectly to a unique, four-part jacket reveal campaign. The first aspect will be unveiled on September 21, followed by the release of additional images on September 25 and September 28, and culminating with the full reveal on October 5, when the world will see that everything is UNDER THE DOME.
The frequent accusation that King writes too long is sometimes deserved. However, when he works in an epic mode, depicting dozens of characters and all their interrelationships, he can produce great work. He did it with The Stand and with It, and he has done it again here. A small Maine town is enclosed one October morning by an impermeable bell jar of unknown origin. Within this pressure cooker, the petty differences and power struggles of village life are magnified and accelerated. Opposing camps develop, one headed by Big Jim Rennie, the Second Selectman, and the other by Dale Barbara, a drifting Iraq vet who was nearly out of town when the Dome fell. The characters are well rounded and interesting while retaining the familiar appeal that has drawn and kept King fans for decades. VERDICT Regular King readers will rejoice at his return to his strengths. Some will balk at the page count, but a fast pace and compelling narrative make the reader's time fly. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/09.]—Karl G. Siewert, Tulsa City-Cty. Lib., OK
Maine. Check. Strange doings. Check. Alien/demon presence. Check. Unlikely heroes. Check. An early scene in King's latest (Just After Sunset, 2008, etc.) takes us past Shawshank Prison, if only in the mind of a character-and there are dozens of characters, large and small, whose minds we enter. One of them, a leading citizen in the quiet town of Chester's Mill, is crooked, conniving wheeler-dealer Big Jim Rennie, whose son, a specialist in taking wrong forks in the road, is the local terror but has apparently surrendered his power to awe to larger forces-in this case, the ones who have very gradually sealed off Chester's Mill from the rest of the world. Why? It's the kind of hamlet where a big night of fun involves driving with a six-pack and a shotgun, hardly the sort of place where the overlords seem likely to land. But these overlords, they're a strange bunch: They walk among us, and they might even be us. King runs riot with players, including a newshound who numbers among his ordinary worries "the inexplicable decay of the town's sewer system and waste treatment plant"; a curious chap named Sea Dogs; some weekend warriors; and the lyrically named Romeo Burpee, who "survived a childhood of merciless taunts . . . to become the richest man in town." Evil is omnipresent here, but organized religion is suspect, useful only for those who would bleat, "The Dome is God's will." The woods are full of malevolent possibilities. Civic and military leaders are usually incompetent. And it's the brave loner who has bothered to do a little research who saves everyone's bacon. Or not. It hardly matters that, after 1,000-plus pages, the yarn doesn't quite add up. It's vintage King: wonderfullywritten, good, creepy, old-school fun.
John
Under the Dome
Stephen King. Scribner, $35 (1,120p) ISBN 978-1-4391-4850-1
King’s return to supernatural horror is uncomfortably bulky, formidably complex and irresistibly compelling. When the smalltown of Chester’s Mill, Maine, is surrounded by an invisible force field, the people inside must exert themselves to survive. The situation deteriorates rapidly due to the dome’s ecological effects and the machinations of Big Jim Rennie, an obscenely sanctimonious local politician and drug lord who likes the idea of having an isolated populace to dominate. Opposing him are footloose Iraq veteran Dale “Barbie” Barbara, newspaper editor Julia Shumway, a gaggle of teen skateboarders and others who want to solve the riddle of the dome. King handles the huge cast of characters masterfully but ruthlessly, forcing them to live (or not) with the consequences of hasty decisions. Readers will recognize themes and images from King’s earlier fiction, and while this novel doesn’t have the moral weight of, say, The Stand, nevertheless, it’s a nonstop thrill ride as well as a disturbing, moving meditation on our capacity for good and evil. (Nov.)
2. Why do all the early reviews have a page count of 1120? The previous information, including E-bay sales of hardback review copies, have the length at 1088 with 1074 pages of text. Are all the reviewers getting a bad number from a press release or something? :-?
I'm not sure. The last numbered page in the ARC is 1074, and their may be 16 pages of unnumbered front material, but that's still well short of 1120.
However, the product description on the first page inside the galley says 1120 pages, so maybe they are planning to add something to the production copy that isn't in the galley? We'll have to wait and see.
http://promo.simonandschuster.com/underthedome/22177_main.php
John