King’s latest will leave you shaking

Brought to you this month in popular culture: the apocalypse.

On the one hand, there’s “2012,” the new movie about those Mayan prophesies of doom for Dec. 21, 2012, with stunning CGI effects so realistic and horrifying they’ll have you begging for your mommy.

On the other hand, there’s Stephen King’s new novel, “Under the Dome,” with no CGI effects at all, just King’s wicked imagination. It’s nearly 1,100 pages of stuff so scary that you’ll realize early on that even if Mommy were Wonder Woman, she couldn’t help you out of this nightmare.

His is an apocalypse of ghastly, intimate proportions, visited on the bucolic Maine town of Chester’s Mills and its citizens as the outer world watches, horrified but unable to assist.

On a gorgeous October morning in Chester’s Mills, a plane crumbles, explodes and falls out of the sky. A deer gets decapitated by an invisible blade; similarly, a woman’s hand is cut off as she reaches for a rotted pumpkin besmirching her garden.

Soon it becomes clear that an impermeable, invisible dome has plummeted down, covering the town, though communication is possible with the folks on the other side.

King, like all great storytellers, hinges things not on the mere plot of what’s happening but on how it alternately corrupts and elevates the character of the humans involved.

This book will remind many King readers of “The Stand,” long acknowledged as his masterpiece. “Under the Dome” comes close to eclipsing it, if only because of its familiar- yet-claustrophobic setting.

You’ll definitely want to read this one, but trust me and do so in a well-ventilated room with plenty of sunlight and a source of fresh water nearby.