Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about the plot?

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An excellent point.  I guess I have to pause occasionally to actaully talk about the friggin' STORY, don't I?

First: a map AND a cast of characters list.  You gotta love that.  I don't think he's done a map and cast since, what, Salem's Lot?  This is serious stuff.

The Prologue, THE AIRPLANE AND THE WOODCHUCK is easy enough: small two-person aircraft is flying over the charming little town of Chester's Mill, Maine, when POP, an invisible forcefield snaps silently into place right in front of them (or through them,, it'shard to tell), and the plane shatters.  On the ground, drectly below, a self-satisfied woodchuck is in exactly the wrong place at the wrong instant and SHTUP!, his north and south sections are sliced right through.

In BARBIE, we meet a cheerful drifter named Barbie -- aguy, LAST name Barbie -- strolling out of town after a vaguely referred-to affair with a local gal and a beating in the parking lot.  Glad to put the town behind him ... and just happens to be on the wrong side of the invisible line when the Dome plinks into place (we know it's a dome only because -- well, hell, it's the name of the book, and even if there aren't any cover blurbs, and there aren't, the prepublicity tells us that much, at least.)  Barbie sees the plane hit the invisible wall.  He sees the woodchuck split in to.  He sees a would-be rescuer on the far side of the barrier smash headlong into the invisible wal and break hiw nose for his trouble.  And we leave him running full-tilt boogie back towards the twon he so recetnly, and quite hapily, abandoned.

JUNIOR AND ANGIE: Junior is one of the locals who did the beating; he also suffers from nasty migraines, and one's coming on now.  Angie is Angie McCain, a local waitress, who's a lifelong friend of Junior's (and girlfriend to a guy named Frankie, we haven't met yet.)  She's jsut getting out of the shower when Junior, trying to ward off a migraine, knocks on her door.  She answers, expecting her boyfriend ... and get Junior instead.  Who proceed to bust in and beat the hell out of her.

Junior's headaches aren't just migraines.  He's got himself a brain tumor and it's making him do some very bad things, all of a sudden.

Which bings us to Page 23, as the crazed and violent Junior shoves the terrorized Angie into the sunlit kitchen.,,,

Junior screamed again.  This time not with rage, but pain.

Ya gotta love this book already.