The Institute: A Novel

It’s no secret; I am a big Stephen King fan. (Not like Annie Wilkes though!) I have often said King is my husband’s only competition. He could tell me stories for the rest of my life, and I’d be in ecstasy. There’s no great romance here, just intense appreciation for a well-told tale and a good scare. I waited for the release of “The Institute” with barely controlled anticipation. I’m pleased to say the wait was worth it. Expanding on the theme of “Firestarter,” King presents a secret government branch that tracks children with psychic abilities with an eye toward utilizing them as weapons. If the idea of The Shop bothered you, the Institute will drive you mad. King teases the reader by laying the groundwork subtly. First, he introduces Tim Jamieson. King has a knack for developing his characters and settings slowly. It’s a clever way of getting readers invested in the characters. He arouses curiosity as he leads us along a path, slyly tossing out clues to tantalize. By the end of the first chapter, I liked Tim. I admired his honesty, his thoughtfulness, and most of all, his daring. Tim does what many people might want to do. He picks up and goes on a journey, rather like a Hero’s Journey. But Tim is not the focus of this disturbingly dark tale. Luke Ellis is a child genius. This unassuming twelve-year-old boy has been attending a school for exceptional children. But the principal informs the boy’s parents he has surpassed what the school can offer. Scheduled to take his SAT’s, a challenge most high school students view with trepidation, Luke approaches the test as an opportunity to get into MIT. He sees the promise of a wonderful future stretching before him. However, this is a King novel. Things don’t go that way. Before he can move into college life, Luke’s parents are murdered, and he is kidnapped. Waking in a copy of his bedroom, he is soon ensconced in life at the Institute. Little by little, he makes friends who introduce him to the dark world he has entered. He suspects his parents are dead but doesn’t know for sure. The administrators of the Institute have one focus. Grooming their charges for assignments to benefit the USA and the world. As Luke learns more about the Institute, he is exposed to experimental drugs and procedures. These are just the beginning of horrors yet to come. The children and there are many of them, are disposable resources to their keepers. As Luke and his new friends move deeper into the program, they realize they must fight back or die at the hands of the staff. King’s skill at gathering groups of kids with diverse personalities and uniting them in a common goal is brilliant. The implication that children are stronger when they band together runs throughout this book much as it did in “It.” Together they exhibit courage, determination, and the kind of unity and single-mindedness usually found in the military. But success also relies on the belief of at least one adult, one person who can provide the grown-up status needed to defy the odds. “The Institute” is a chilling take on the corruption in government where the end justifies the means. It is only when we stand together, united for the good, that we can overcome the dark forces that threaten our world. With well-developed characters and a couple of scary settings, “The Institute” is a warning. King does a great job of weaving the real world we live in with the fictional worlds he creates. Governments like to play God. Every one wants to be the big dog, the one with the most control. We need to keep our eyes open and speak up when something is going south. Otherwise, we are complicit in the wrongs that are done in the name of ‘right.’ As an aside, I both read the book and listened on Audible. Either way, it’s a winner.

Stephen King's brain, on the other hand, just keeps flowing with good stuff! This book is intriguing, suspenseful, thought provoking, and (as usual) keeps you on the edge of your seat!If they were available, I would give it many more than 5 stars!

I've been accused of being predisposed to like everything that Stephen King wrote, and while I don't think that's entirely true, I think it is true that it's hard for me to think of many King books that I didn't enjoy reading. That's not the same as saying they're all good books (not when you have a Dreamcatcher, a Tommyknockers, or a Gerald's Game in the mix), but what it is saying is that King is too accomplished an author, too good of a storyteller to not have something appealing about the way he's spinning his stories. And even when the story is a bad one, immersing yourself in King's conversational prose, expert pacing, and gift for unease and horror is all but guaranteed to lead to a fun read, even if it ends up being unsatisfying.None of which is to say that King's newest, The Institute, is a bad book. Indeed, The Institute is a perfectly fun, entertaining read - not on a par with King's best work by a long shot, but far from his worst. It's a solid, engaging story, well-told as usual and paced with King's usual intensity and gift for buildup. It's just that, by the time you finish, you realize there's not much meat on these bones, and more frustratingly, you can see the chances where there could have been that substance...but instead we got a solid little B-movie thriller with head nods towards something more.After a (surprisingly lengthy) prologue involving a small-town cop, The Institute settles into its main story: the titular organization, which has been abducting children who show signs of telepathic and telekinetic abilities, no matter how weak they might be. So when genius teenager Luke Ellis winds up here, it's not his intellect they want him for; it's more about those odd times that doors move without him ever touching him. But Luke's intelligence leads him to start poking holes in the stories about the Institute and result in him trying to figure out exactly what's going on in the Back Half of the building, into which kids disappear and don't come back.The reason for all of this remains unsaid for quite some time, and ultimately, that explanation is one of the more compelling and unexpected aspects of The Institute - it's not the exact reasons King leads us to assume, and it's one that could have led to some thoughtful moral calculations. Instead, The Institute is more about trying to rebel in the face of unfathomable moral cruelty, in which children are mistreated and abused in the name of some greater good and without ever being acknowledged as human beings. (Luckily, there are no modern-day or contemporary parallels here at all. Nope.) Essentially, it's a prison break book - The Great Escape with psychic children, if you wanted to be reductive about it.And that's not necessarily a bad thing! Few authors handle pacing as well as King, and there are some great setpieces here, from the slow unfolding of an escape plan to a showdown in a small town to the unveiling of the true power of some of these kids. And those treatments? They're intense and horrifying, raising the specter of "enhanced interrogation" methods committed in the name of a greater good without ever making that connection explicitly clear. All of that leads to some deeply despicable villains whose comeuppance becomes something I truly needed by the end of it all, and some characters who I genuinely wanted to see get through all of this okay.Still, I'm a few days out from finishing The Institute now, and my main thought is "Yeah, that was pretty good." There aren't many chances taken here, and little new ground broken. There's nothing here like the ambition and power of 11/22/63 or the horrors of the end of Revival; instead, you're getting a solid little thriller, one that's well-told and incredibly engaging, but won't really leave you much to chew on. But when the book is still as compulsively readable as this one is, I don't think that's the worst thing in the world.

An interesting book, I enjoyed reading it, book was in perfect condition upon arrival.

Produit conforme à la description

Am a big fan of 'On Writing, A Memoir Of The Craft'. Only recently started reading King's novels as I didn't think I would enjoy them - but how wrong I was! The guy is a modern-day genius!

havent read the book yet but the description says that there should be over 550 pages, mine has 485🤠 idk if they just squeezed the story in less than 500 pages bc of the small print or am i just missing the ending of the book💀?

I’ve been a reader of mr King since my early teens…going early 50’s now.It has been a long time since I wasn’t able to lay a book away longer then 8 hours…and this is one of them.Terrific story, great characters and a nice supernatural plot.Thank you Stephen, greetings from Belgium