A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 SELECTION From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It. In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke … SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents–telekinesis and telepathy–who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
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King’s magic is in his characters, and this one is no exception. Proximal to IT and FIRESTARTER, THE INSTITUTE is his classic children versus darkness tale, drawn in the flawless and consuming way we’ve come to expect from this master storyteller.
A masterpiece of fiction from one of the greats writers of our time. I cannot even begin to describe the way I felt while reading this. I can honestly say I felt everything, anger and sadness, to joy and relief, even a little rage thrown into the mix! A truly atrocious series of events lead to a group of children being held against their will, in one of the most horrific place you could ever imagine being. In true Stephen King style it’s a little out there and though I don’t classify this as a horror for my part, I can see where some people might find that the case. Exceptional writing, world building and character development! It’s as un-putdownable as any of his works and I cannot express my joy if it was ever made into a movie/TV series! Thanks again for an outstanding story that took me on a journey with some truly awe inspiring characters!
No one writes the story of the 12-year-old hero like Stephen King. From the kids of The Stand to those of It, and now, The Institute, the reader has no choice but to be instantly and completely invested.
My Thoughts – A young boy is viscously yanked into a malevolent isolated environment filled with sinister intentions. Stephen King once again successfully builds a foundation based on characters and the horrific challenges that they are submitted to and must overcome. Constant Readers rejoice, for another King novel is upon us
I’ve been reading Stephen King since I was in my early-teens, before I could drive. I started with IT under the auspices of go big or go home, and I haven’t looked back since. In fact, I devoured all that I could, gobbling up one book after the next, moving onto The Stand immediately afterwards and then joining the Stephen King fan club. I still have the skeleton key chain with the jeweled eyes somewhere around the house. It’s a relationship that’s lasted for, at least and by my best estimation, 25 years. I’ve only known and cared for my parents longer than I have Stephen King, but I’ll be damned if I don’t hold him in as high a regard. Sitting down with his books is like regarding a familiar loved one for me. And while I do consider myself a Constant Reader, I must admit there have been some lapses on my part. I missed a good chunk of his novels and short story collections between 2013 through 2016, but was drawn back by Sleeping Beauties, admittedly an unfortunate novel to return to after some time away. The Outsider, thankfully, more than made up for that particular misstep, though, and The Institute shows King in top form once again.
He credits his grandchildren with providing him inspiration for this story, and he’s left them, and his readers, one hell of a tome. King brings his A-game here, infusing his words with heart, humor, and a grim darkness that has inadvertently capitalized on real-world horrors. When he was writing The Institute, Trump’s concentration camps along the Mexican border had yet to become a last stop in the life of a number of young children seeking better lives prior to being ripped away from their parents and stuffed into overcrowded cages and left to suffer a host of miseries before their deaths. Reading this book in the wake of the Trump regime’s atrocities, it’s impossible to not draw comparisons, especially when one character pointedly wonders what kind of monsters would put children in a facility like The Institute.
Luke is a gifted twelve-year-old, blessed with an intellect well beyond his years and brimming with an insatiable curiosity. His brain is on overdrive, and he has another gift as a result. Luke can move objects with his mind, usually inadvertently and during times of emotional upheaval. He gets excited and slides a pizza pan off a table without even touching it, for instance. It’s his telekinetic gifts that make him a target for The Institute, though. In a late-night raid on his home, his parents are murdered and Luke is abducted. He wakes up in a room very similar to his own, but outside his bedroom door is a prison-like structure where other children, some telekinetic like him, others telepathic, have been abducted and imprisoned. Each day, they are given injections, experimented on, and tortured in order to enhance their unnatural talents. If they live long enough, they are moved to the Back Half, a secret part of the facility that’s known only through rumor and innuendo, but one thing is certain. The kids that are moved there are never seen or heard from again.
Although children are the primary focus of The Institute, King doesn’t shy away from the harsh treatment of them at the hands of their merciless abductors. When I first read IT as a teen, I could easily see myself as a member of The Losers Clubs. Reading The Institute as a parent of two young boys, there were times I felt more like a helpless, and at times hapless, bystander. Although there’s plenty of sequences involving children in jeopardy, some of which carry plenty of impact through a less is more approach, King shies away from a Jack Ketchum level of brutality. You won’t mistake The Institute for something like The Girl Next Door, but there are still a number of horrifying moments where you want to reach into the pages and save these children, and maybe give the Institute’s guards a much needed beating (or worse). I didn’t find the kids of The Institute to be as effortlessly relateable as I did Bill Denbrough’s gang, but King most definitely got my empathetic alarms blaring red alert here, loudly and long into the night.
King taps into a particular darkness here, but it’s one that’s levied by hope, a staple of most of this author’s works and the thing that make his best narratives so damn compelling. Yes, this is a horror book, and its nastiness is all the more gut-churning for how awfully human it is, but there is a sweetness at its core that you cannot help but root for. King gives you a little bit of sugar to quell the bitter taste the men and women of The Institute leave in your mouth. Luke and his small circle of friends and comrades-in-arms are easy to root for, and you get to know each of them pretty well as the story builds towards an exciting and devastating climax. I do have one small caveat about King’s presentation of these kids, though, and it comes in his initial writing of Luke, whose dialogue between his parents is awfully awkward, and during an SAT exam where he jokes with another student about staying at a Holiday Inn. It’s a lame and dated bit of humor that had me rolling eyes that were otherwise glued to the page thereafter. These small complaints are literally the only issue I had with this book, and they make up such an insignificant amount of this title’s 576 pages that they’re enormously easy to gloss over.
The Institute was an absolute pleasure to read, with moments of heartbreak nicely balanced with fist-pumping action sequences and deft sweetness. King shows, again, why he’s the king of horror, and my absolute all-time favorite writer.
It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a Stephen King book as much as this one. It’s timely and entertaining.
I’m a huge Stephen King fan. The very first book I ever read of his was Carrie, fell in love right there and then, that love has never fallen, I started reading this last night after an epic 3 hour, nose to my kindle race to finish a previous book on my never decreasing, “TO BE READ LIST” I have no idea where my thought process was because ‘COME ON’ It’s Stephen bloody King, KING OF THE DARK SIDE, If you’re a fan, you know what I mean, So today comes with 50% function rate, sleep deprivation (sleep what is that?, for a reader it is an optional pass time), if you are a reader you will understand perfectly . Once you pick up a book of his, it becomes a magnet to your hand and you simply can not, will not put it down. Mr King has remained consistent, in all my years as a reader, his ways of captivating the reader are second to none, and just as horrifying, you can make my hair stand on end, and looking over my shoulder for the rest of the day. Your thought process is quite frankly alarmingly bloody fantastic to the absolute pleasure of your faithful fans. I won’t go into a lot of the story because like all his books go in blind, they all start relatively the same small quaint towns, people living ordinary lives, while we all know its so far from the truth its frightening, I always find that after reading one of his books, I tend to look at the place I live and the people and friends who reside there in a totally different light, wondering if they have guilty secrets, Just go get this latest King release, its epic , well worth the money. I loved it
Excellent read. King does it again.
Best King book in years
Reading is a highly personal pastime. A book someone loves someone else might detest. But for me, this is the best Stephen King book I’ve read in years (and I’ve read all of his books).
This book is about kids with the paranormal abilities of telepathy and telekinesis that are being kidnapped. That’s all I’m going to say about the plot of the book.
King does his wondrous job of bringing kids to life on the pages before us. The good – and the bad – guys are all multi-dimensional.
The plot is great. This book is well over 500 pages and I did not want it to end. I read late into the night each day I was reading it, hating to have to put it down to sleep.
Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Vintage King, who has created a clutch of brave, reader-friendly characters and a twisty plot that–while it set up its resolution in the first section–kept me wondering how they were going to work their way out of their predicament. The horror elements are believable, which makes them even stronger.
The mantra for this book is STRONGER TOGETHER and if you think that’s a political statement, you’re 100% right. (King also includes a swipe or two at Trump while he’s at it.) I enjoyed THE INSTITUTE. If you’re a King fan, you will, too.
After a clunky start, I ended up really enjoying this latest creation from Stephen King. The story of the kids in The Institute teased out just enough information to keep even the slower parts intriguing. I mean, you’ve just got to know what the Institute is doing! And you have to wonder if any of the kids are going to survive their time there.
At times this does feel like Stephen King trying to write a Stephen King book. You’ve got the group of kids (Stand by Me), you’ve got a prison-type situation (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), you’ve got the wicked lady (Misery), you’ve got a prisoner befriending one of the prison folks using his knowledge of financial matters (Shawshank Redemption), and more. Still, if you’re going to borrow from an author, borrowing from Stephen King isn’t a bad way to go :))
As for the clunky start. The first part of the book is entirely the backstory of Tim, who gets a job at a night watchman in a small town. Then you’re suddenly thrown into Luke’s story (the main kid) and left wondering why you had to wade through so much of Tim’s story. Granted, Tim does come back to play a part later in the book, but I felt his backstory could have been trickled in with Luke’s story rather than dumped all at the beginning.
I’ve always enjoyed how Stephen King looks through the eyes of children to tell a tragic story. This one feels like a combination of “Carrie” mixed with “It”. I loved it.
Not often I rave about a Stephen King novel, but I really loved this one. It’s long, but it does keep you interested. And you almost believe it could happen. Fans will love it, and it will bring a few more to the fold. Recommended.
Though I never know what to expect with Stephen King, he never ceases to surprise and entertain. The Institute was a great read, and I was frustrated, angered and ultimately satisfied. I highly recommend!
Not the traditional hair-raising, scary Stephen King novel, but a good plot with well-developed characters you can root for.
This was spectacular! I hate to admit it but I avoided Stephen King’s books until about 5 years ago or so. When I was a teenager almost 30 years ago, I read a short story written by King and didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t pick up another book with his name on it for another 25 years. It turns out this was a very big mistake. Huge. I could have been enjoying his books all these years and didn’t give them a chance because for some reason I thought that my teenage mind was able to make a good decision. I have matured a lot as a reader and a human being and have enjoyed his books that I have picked up during the past several years but I have a lot of catching up to do.
I found myself like the characters in this book right away. We first meet Tim who becomes a night knocker in a small southern town. I liked Tim a lot but I really felt like Luke was the driving force of this story. Luke is a twelve-year-old boy who happens to be a well-adjusted genius. Luke’s life falls apart when he is taken to the Institute. He is able to make friends and keep himself safe in this unkind environment. Luke never stops thinking and always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone else. I couldn’t help but want to see good things happen for this awesome kid and his friends.
I loved the way this book came together. I felt like there were a lot of finely moving parts that worked perfectly to tell a larger story. Every piece of information may become important at a later time. The descriptions were so vivid that I almost felt like I was there with Luke through all of his experiences. I found this plot to be incredibly original. The story was really exciting at times with some pretty intense action. I found parts of the book to also be emotional. Luke goes through a whole lot in this book and I really felt for him at times.
I would highly recommend this book to others. I had a fantastic time with this book and hated to put it down. It really was a joy to read and I cannot wait to read more of King’s work.
Excellent read in the tradition of Firestarter. Would love to see more with these characters.
First, a disclosure, I’m a huge Stephen King fan. I read “The Dead Zone” when I was 14 and it was a revelation to me. The main characters were high school teachers and I felt like the book let me see into the world of adults – what they were thinking, feeling, etc. Then I read “Carrie” in high school and the story exposed cliques and bullying in a raw way that I hadn’t seen it discussed before. In college I read “The Stand” that post-apocalyptic American fantasy blew me away. Later, I made the journey to the Dark Tower and loved the ‘meta-ness’ of the epic tale. I went on to read and watch everything King and it continues today.
I’m amazed at the staying power of King, his ability to write at a high level for such a long period. Many creators dry up at some point, but not the King. While I found “Elevation” to be a bit ‘light’ the Mr. Mercedes series was excellent, and “The Outsider” was fine as well. Well, King continues right along with “The Institute”, delivering another excellent work. It’s not a masterpiece and I’ll explain why I feel that way, but it is right in King’s wheelhouse and delivers a nostalgic and emotional punch.
King borrows much from prior works to frame this book. The clearest connection is from “Firestarter”. Instead of “The Shop” we have “The Institute” and instead of Charlie McGee, we have Luke Ellis, special kids indeed. There are prison and prison escape elements that reminded me of “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”. There is a group of kids coming together to overcome evil that feels very much like “IT”. So, yeah, right in King’s wheelhouse – group of kids coming together-check, paranormal activity made to feel believable-check, slowly revealed evil-check, and wonderful observations about everyday life-check. The book was a comfortable read for me, even if it’s a bit slower paced in the middle. It felt like King was right at home telling this story and that allowed him to develop strong characters and show off his top-notch writing.
One of King’s strengths is his ability to make the paranormal seem, well, normal. He does this by inventing slang and describing character reactions honestly. He’s also great at planting questions in reader’s minds that pulls them along through the story. In this book, you’ll be dying to know things like:
– Who is this night-knocker (quasi-cop) and what does he have to do with the rest of the story?
– What happens to the kids when they leave the front half of the Institute?
– What’s in the back half of the Institute?
– What’s in the back half of the Back Half?
– Who’s going to live and who’s not? If you’re familiar with King at all, you know he’s not afraid to ‘kill his darlings’!
So, fantastic characters, an intriguing plot, and excellent writing. Well, what about the ending? If I have a criticism about King, it’s that he sometimes builds up such suspense and so much intrigue, that his ending can feel anti-climactic (an example for me is “The Outsider”). Well, in my opinion, that’s not the case here. The ending felt strong and fitting for the tale. I didn’t want it end, and it was sad, but it tied up the story properly. It wasn’t a surprising twist or mind-blowing, but it was a first-rate conclusion. So, riveting beginning, gripping middle, and exciting finish, why isn’t this a masterpiece. What holds it back from the level of “IT”, “The Shining”, or “The Stand”?
While, I enjoyed myself all the way through this book, nothing blew me away. There wasn’t the shock of “The Stand”, or the horror (or revulsion) of “IT”, or the atmosphere of “The Shining”. One thing that holds it back is evil, the villains don’t have the paranormal element. While hateful, they really didn’t evoke the horror of IT or even the creepiness of a Brady Hartsfield. While I didn’t mind King storytelling in familiar waters there was nothing that really knocked me off kilter or opened a world of possibilities for me to consider. This doesn’t mean this isn’t an excellent book, I’m just explaining why it’s not a masterpiece for me. Four and a half stars rounded to five for me.
A masterfully told story about paranormal children ripped from their lives by an evil group and their struggle to escape the hell of “The Institute”.
Great book. I can’t get enough of Stephen King!
I love Stephen King, and I love adult books that have kids as heroes, so The Institute is a natural for me. The beginning is a little slow, and doesn’t have the typical death or dark foreshadowing one might expect from King. I appreciate the introduction to Tim, Wendy, Annie and the town of Dupray, because I feel it gives the story additional depth. The personalities of the kids in The Institute are consistent and well-written, though I wish Mr. King would update his teen lexicon. Often his young characters speak as though they were raised in the 60s, when the book is set in more modern times.
King is not known for writing books with good endings, but The Institute has a good ending, and that’s one of the many things about this book that makes me happy.