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A review by ppkfs
The Institute by Stephen King
5.0
I couldn't quite work out what to rate this. My eventual rating was based off my gut feeling, rather than working things through.
The book itself is fine. It's Stephen King fine, which is closer to a normal great; the man has the whole "thriller about something vaguely paranormal meddling with things beyond the protagonists' paygrades" spiel down to a tee. But that has its downsides that it's...kinda generic. It doesn't have the draw of The Shining or the epic feel of The Stand. It's almost sloppy - for instance Tim is introduced as the first character, then ignored for some 200 plus pages. Everything is fairly predictable.
But there's just something about the book that I can't shake. I felt such a connection to the kids. It's weird to say that now, having read the book; it's quite clearly meant as a horror-slash-thriller not some kind of emotional thing, and I can't point to an aspect that "oh yes, the way Luke/Avery/Kalisha/Nicky is personnified here really makes you relate to them". But...I was. Maybe their TK got to me.
So yeah. I don't know why I feel so strongly about this; it was perhaps the last 100 pages that did something to make this not just another Stephen King novel, but there damn well was something.
The book itself is fine. It's Stephen King fine, which is closer to a normal great; the man has the whole "thriller about something vaguely paranormal meddling with things beyond the protagonists' paygrades" spiel down to a tee. But that has its downsides that it's...kinda generic. It doesn't have the draw of The Shining or the epic feel of The Stand. It's almost sloppy - for instance Tim is introduced as the first character, then ignored for some 200 plus pages. Everything is fairly predictable.
But there's just something about the book that I can't shake. I felt such a connection to the kids. It's weird to say that now, having read the book; it's quite clearly meant as a horror-slash-thriller not some kind of emotional thing, and I can't point to an aspect that "oh yes, the way Luke/Avery/Kalisha/Nicky is personnified here really makes you relate to them". But...I was. Maybe their TK got to me.
So yeah. I don't know why I feel so strongly about this; it was perhaps the last 100 pages that did something to make this not just another Stephen King novel, but there damn well was something.