A review by writerdgabrielle
The Institute by Stephen King

3.0

The Institute, if you are familiar with King’s catalog, follows a structure quite similar to that of Finders Keepers, in that we are given multiple stories that eventually converge and if you are paying close enough attention, you know, long before they do, how they will do it. Both stories feature a kid who finds himself in a heap of trouble and is later aided (not rescued, not in the strictest sense of the word) by an adult who, under normal circumstances, would never be the type to believe this child’s outlandish story.

But, perhaps, it is because the story is so outlandish that the adult in question does believe the child.

Either way, we begin the story with a detour, if you can detour before you have even found the path you were meant to be on. We begin with not-a-cop-anymore Tim Jamieson who is called by some invisible force to deboard a plane bound for his new life, in favor of cold hard cash and a meal voucher.

After following Tim on a disjointed journey from Florida north into South Carolina, we are swept off that path to where the cover blurb suggests the real story begins. And this, friends and family, is, I believe, one of the complaints many readers have when it comes to King’s work. It is definitely the thing that keeps me from tackling some of his more ambitious works; the detour that isn’t really a detour because we hadn’t even found the right road yet.

Before I even started this story, simply reading the cover blurb about a boy in a facility performing tests meant to enhance his psychic abilities, I had memories of my favorite of all of King’s stories, Firestarter. Years later, Charlie McGee holds a firm place on my list of powerful women.

At no point, in the blurb, in the backmatter, in the story itself, are we given confirmation that Luke Ellis’s Institute is part of the same network as the Shop where Andy McGee and Vicki Tomlinson met and fell in love, later conceiving Charlene. That it is an unintentional sequel or spinoff is an expectation that I had set, on my own, going in. But there is nothing saying it isn’t, either. And the parallels between what was done to Charlie (and her parents) and what was done to Luke and his new rag-tag group of friends—friends who, despite their deplorable circumstances, are probably the truest friends each of them have ever had—are stark and undeniable.

The first 40-55% of The Institute is a slog, I’m not going to sugar coat that. It’s a necessary slog. It is learning to walk before you can run. Everything we learn in the first half is presented in a way that the second half wouldn’t offer the same impact without the first half. That that is wholly intentional—setting up the entire book so that it mimics life in the Institute where what happens in the Back Half wouldn’t work without what first happens in the Front Half—is not outside the realm of possibilities from a mind like King’s. It is that level of detail that makes him one of the Masters.

I know the instinct is to look at this book and say it’s King; it’s horror. But I no longer believe that, about much of his work. Thriller? Yes. Paranormal thriller? Not always but in this case, also yes. Science fiction? It is also some of that. Horrific? Undoubtedly, but being horrific does not automatically qualify something as horror and I tend to agree with those who say King doesn’t write horror; he writes literary fiction with horror elements. I am far more inclined to label this one as a sci-fi thriller or paranormal thriller than outright horror.

Why only three stars for someone I have called a Master of his craft? Because of that slog. The wet sand is wholly necessary but if it weren’t for my love of Charlie McGee and my need to find out how close the ending of The Institute resembled the ending of Firestarter, I probably would have given up 40 or 50 pages in. I am glad I didn’t, but even by the end, it was not amazing or even great; it was simply good.