What I learned from King

So, I finished "Under the Dome" this morning at 1:30 am... If you haven't finished the book, you might not want to read this post if you don't want things ruined. This is the first book that I've read since Harry Potter that I just couldn't put down. I loved this book, at least until the last 200 pages... It only took me a week to read it because I could only read it in short burst, all together though I'm pretty sure I knocked it out in about 12 hours just because I was eager to see what was next. Outside of the foreshadowing thing that everyone has mentioned, I this was an awesome book. I was attached to the characters all the way through. When I was about 200 pages in, I thought I could see an ending about to occur, but obviously it didn't. I could not imagine how he was going to end and who was going to survive. I guess this is what caused my impatience and fast reading. I have not read any other King books, but I'm curious about one thing. I quickly learned (about the time Brenda or Sammy died or even Duke) to not pick favorite characters, because as soon as I started favoring one, it's like King knew it and then just had to kill them in some horrible way. Is this how King works or is it just for this book? I know he kills off people, but it's like he wanted to be attached to a certain character before killing them. I guess this makes the story that much better. I definitely hated Rennie more and more for each death. I guess you could call the whole children playing with ants a message? I thought it was a clever way to point out how horrible humans can be. The whole alien children thing was pretty cool, though I had that ruined before even starting the book. One last thing, what did you guys think about the ghosts attaching Rennie? I was pretty sure he was going to make it out. Those few short pages scared the crap out of me. I can't imagine reading a whole book like that, so I'll probably avoid any of King's ghost stories.