Review: The Institute

The Institute by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not bad at all. This is only my second King read and it was much better than the first, which was 'Cycle of the Werewolf', (hey, even when I was into horror and vampires I never really got into werewolves).

The blurb is apt, so you should read that for the general idea. Here's my short review:
0 - 10%: Boring
10 - 50%: Interesting
50 - 90%: A captivating thrill ride
90 - 100%: Late exposition, which would have worked much better if it came before the climax.

Here's the longer version:

At the start we meet a bloke called Tim and we follow him around while he kicks some asses in a little country town somewhere in the US. He's a cool dude, a real smooth cat, but I couldn't figure out his connection to the main story. He'll reappear much later, so I guess it was nice to meet him before the shit hit the fan.

"Her name was Marjorie Kellerman, and she ran the Brunswick library. She also belonged to something called the Southeastern Library Association. Which, she said, had no money because “Trump and his cronies took it all back. They understand culture no more than a donkey understands algebra.”

So, this is a bit of an aside, but I wasn't expecting to find such real world references (as quoted above) in the story. I liked it. And was pleased to get a small impression of King's political leaning. I recall the US Affordable Care Act was mentioned later in the story as well.

Finally, about 10% in we meet Lukey. The kid savant with telekinetic ability. We see a little of his education and home life before his parents get bagged and then he wakes up at the institute.

At this point I'm going to be honest, I didn't begin to enjoy this story until after the double murder and abduction had taken place. Let's not dwell on what that says about me as a person, but after that I was at least mildly interested all the way to the end.

As Luke gets to know his new surroundings, I found it a little unrealistic that the kids take it all, at first, so casually in their stride. They seem to recognise that it's unusual but I might have expected a bit more trauma. I guess there's something to it because a lot of kids simply need direction, but thankfully as the story progresses we get more of a sense of how they really feel.

When one of the institute researchers(?) wants to put a chip in Luke's arm and he refuses to cooperate, the doctor(?) flips from friendly to sociopathic in a heartbeat and blurts out something like "you damn kids, you think you own the world." I couldn't fit this line into the scenario. The guy works with kidnapped children whose parents have been slain and somehow he thinks that these kids are snobs??? Alright, I'm fired up.

"He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth."

The kids have computer access, so there's an "mmhmm" moment. Boy Wonder finds a way to use the internet freely and without detection, but rather interestingly he struggles to bring himself to check the news for information about his own family.

Well, the first half sets up the dread of the place and puts a few mysteries into motion and at right about half way the action begins to ramp up. Up to this point I had been interested but not particularly impressed. Let me explain.

Firstly, there was the bit at the start which seemed to have no connection at all to the story I expected to read. Secondly, I don't really like stories about kids. That's not strictly true, it does work really well sometimes, but I usually struggle a bit with kid POVs. Thirdly and probably most significantly, this is my second ever King read and you'd have to be pretty disconnected to not be aware of his reputation. I have enjoyed many aspects of the story but just wouldn't even nearly have thought this was written by a true literary master. Well, horses for courses and mileages vary etc... and even though I hadn't been particularly impressed by the other King I'd read either, I still had very high expectations - which up to half way had not been met.

Speaking of my expectations. Around this action-y development at half time, it was pretty obvious that things were going to get very bad, very soon.

"It came to him, with the force of a revelation, that you had to have been imprisoned to fully understand what freedom was."

"The bruises on his face would bloom, then fade in a week or two. The look in his eyes might take longer."

Here's something I learned while reading. It was difficult reading about these kids being tortured precisely because they were kids. I think I would have been fine with it if they were adults and that makes me feel odd.

This story is probably the only story that has ever made me wish that telekenesis was a very real thing. I really, really wanted these kids to fuck shit up for the assholes running the institute.

After a bit, in the second half, the narrative flips very quickly between the different sets of events. This added a lot of excitement and all of the threads were going to be important to the outcome.

Eventually it gets a bit Children of the Corn for me but it was still a lot of fun and as I said, by now this was something that I was wishing for.

I'm not going to say much about the end section. It's mostly predicable, but I enjoyed it a lot. It's epic, exciting and grand. I nearly swayed up to a 5-star rating at some points but found that I ultimately had a few issues which I couldn't ignore.

What I will say though, is that I would have expected more supernatural stuff from King. I mean, for me psychic powers and telekinesis are bad enough, but I personally liked how it was related to BDNF levels in this story. And I like Spock, so I can get behind it for the right story. This was the right story. And I'm glad that it didn't get any more supernatural than it did.

I can recommend this. It'd make a sweet movie too.

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