The Institute by Stephen King

Presque Isle, Maine

I’ll start off by saying this is my first Stephen King novel. My father and brother are avid King readers, and, with my tastes being so different from theirs, I assumed I wouldn’t like any of his work. But this book was selected for a book club I’m a part of, so I read it.

The narrator of the story is Luke Ellis, an extremely gifted 12 year old boy from Minneapolis preparing to enroll at MIT and Emerson. Occasionally, when he is very emotional, strange things happen. Objects move inexplicably. Then one day, Luke wakes up in a strange place. His room looks like his room, with small differences. But when he opens his door, he discovers he’s not in Minnesota anymore…

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Luke’s parents were murdered, and Luke was taken to a top secret facility in rural Maine called The Institute. Children with rare abilities, telekinesis (TK) and telepathy (TP) are brought to be experimented on and to increase their powers. The reason the children are at this facility is not revealed until the second half of the novel, when Ellis’s close friends are brought to the “back half” of the facility. As it turns out, the children are forced to work together to take down certain political figures that are thought to have the potential to cause chaos in the world.

The conditions throughout The Institute are, predictably, pretty horrible. The work in the back half drains the children’s mental capacity. Eventually, they end up in “Ward A,” where they are little more than walking zombies, and after they stop functioning all together, they are burned in The Institute’s crematorium.

With the help of his friends, Luke escapes from The Institute. He is able to catch a train down to Dupray, South Carolina where he meets Tim Jamieson (Jamieson is briefly introduced at the beginning of the novel - which was a nice touch by King). The folks from The Institute are able to track Ellis down, but the motley crew from Duprey defeat them through the power of friendship and loose gun control laws. Luke and Tim travel back to Maine to rescue his friends, while at the same time his friends are attempting to take down The Institute by communicating with children in Institutes around the world. In the end, all of Luke’s friends are able to escape except for young Avery, whose powers were stronger than everyone and were needed for the formidable task of literally bringing down The Institute.

From what I’ve heard about Stephen King, it seems like he dialed down the horror in this one. Sure, the conditions at The Institute were bad, and the children were being tortured on a near daily basis, but there were very few gut punches, very few phrases that I just had to turn my eyes away from the page because they were so disturbing or uncomfortable. That probably makes me sound like a terrible person - the fact that I don’t think children being tortured for the sake of the “balance of the universe” isn’t disturbing enough. But I thought King was known for gut punching.

In the prologue-like chapter, we meet the mysterious figure in charge of all the Institutes. He approaches and talks to Luke and Tim several months after The Institute in Maine (and all the other Institutes) are destroyed. He calmly explains how Luke and Tim have now caused the destruction of the world. There is a group of powerful people with precognitive abilities, who were the ones selecting the targets for the children in The Institute.

I appreciated the ending and that we learn the full extent to why The Institute was in place (unlike some horrible books that just leave you in the dark *cough cough Good Morning Midnight). But I think the ending could have been improved if some catastrophic event did happen a few months after The Institutes were taken down. It would have made the novel creepier. Perhaps there could be hints of Luke or one of his friends needing to create another Institute (but one that treats the conscripters better). The idea that Institutes would still need to continue would be a more dynamic ending than just the good guys defeating the bad guys then living happily ever after on a farm in South Carolina.

I wouldn’t use this book to introduce someone to the world of Stephen King, but it wasn’t a bad book by any means.

Review by the Numbers

Overall: 3/5

Writing: 3/5

Plot: 3/5

Character Development: 3/5

Message: 2/5

Challenges Satisfied:

- Maine (Reading My Way Around the World Challenge)

- Book by an Author that has Written Over 20 Books (“Your Favorite Prompt from a Past PopSugar Reading Challenge” - 2021 PopSugar Reading Challenge)