Book Review

The Institute by Stephen King

At some point in about 2013, I simply stopped reading books. Shortly after reading Dr Sleep, the then latest Stephen King novel and sequel to his book, The Shining, I didn't read anything for four years.
Really. No books or novels, just newspapers and magazine articles.

I was busy writing my own novel - The Imagination Station - and that took all of my mental capacity at the time. About to face employment oblivion, I concentrated my efforts on writing and took a fledgling idea to its current final draft stage (a stage that has hovered uncontrollably after a frantic return to rewrite duties, last year). I also didn't want to read anything. We continued to buy books, the wife is an avid devourer of books and many times I'd pick one of her books up and think, 'maybe.' Yet, maybe never really came.

About six months before we moved, I reread the His Dark Materials books. The time was right and I wanted something I could enjoy that wouldn't challenge me too much. I had my book too deeply ingrained (I know what I mean by that, I can't be arsed to explain to those who don't). And that was it. We moved. I continued to not read books. The new Philip Pullman book came out - the new adventure of Lyra - and it took me almost fourteen months to start reading it after having it bought for me the previous Christmas. Even when I did read it, it didn't reignite my once bottomless thirst for fiction, but I did start reading again - selective stuff and mainly re-reading.

The second of Pullman's new Lyra trilogy came out last Christmas and it only took me four months to start to read it. Partly due to my interest being piqued by the recent BBC/HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials. I finished it and felt unfulfilled; don't get me wrong, it's a good book and an intriguing new story, but I felt the itch hadn't been scratched - both in this new Lyra adventure and my return to reading. The desire for something else that was new was growing and that was what brought me to The Institute...

Before we go there, we need to address the last King book I read. I saw Dr Sleep as a stepping off point, not just for reading in general, but to escape my decades old obsession with Stephen King (and his hardbacks). Unfortunately, the wife wasn't prepared to do that, so we've continued to buy them as they come out - with only one missing. That is why we have The Institute, that and because it was one of the Christmas presents I got her.

I can say that I'm already casting my eye across the bookshelves for the next book to consume, now that is finished. I don't know for sure if the old sparkle is back, but it certainly seems that way and the latest Stephen King novel has helped redevelop that...

First off. I feel King has been reusing old ideas in new ways for two decades. Cell is a cut price shorthand version of The Stand and much of what followed could be identified in earlier novels. If it ain't broke why fix it? If you want to revisit old ideas then make them better, not inferior. Pale imitations. Occasionally, there was something that excited; that felt different, but generally King felt like an aged rock and roller trying to recapture his glorious past.

The Institute is Firestarter, but with less pyrotechnics and more 21st century nous. The names change but the faces remain the same. It almost briefly wanders in Dead Zone territory and skirts around earlier King novels which featured The Shop or had characters with vastly superior brains. Yet, unlike those earlier books, this seems to follow a different timeline; is set in a slightly different part of King's multiverse. The Institute isn't The Shop and the two never met in these pages; the earlier incarnation of 'government' sanctioned human experimentation was not even given a recognising nod, even if there was a backhanded reference to the likes of good old Johnny Smith.

The story begins with Tim Jamieson, essentially drifting north after losing his job as a cop, quickly switches to Luke Ellis, bonafide child prodigy/genius and then after a typical King intro plunges straight into shock and awe. It really doesn't hang about. King has never had a problem shocking his Constant Reader with an unexpected death or a peculiar turn; it's almost like he enjoys it - it's one of the way he unsettles his readers - to borrow the advertising line from the first Peter Gabriel album - "Expect the Unexpected" and this is no exception and it's done with such power and almost incredulity that you're hooked from that point.

The Institute is an example of the evil that men (and women) can do if they believe what they're doing is for the benefit of mankind and that belief turns the staff at the Institute into modern day Mengeles and his Nazi scientists... Or does it? It's certainly tinged with a sadistic streak and as you read it you wonder how King could allow himself to go to these places (although he 'went there' far worse in It!); it touches areas that parents of any child would view as barbaric.

It's certainly a rollercoaster ride; many of his books in recent years have swapped exposition for pace; where the minor supporting cast of Dupre would have had almost a book in itself; however it is a fleeting glimpse of the township and its more colourful residents and then, like some hand is guiding the coincidences to reach a certain point, for best part of the rest of the story it is ignored; forgotten about. It never leaves you, the sensation, that at some point the world we're introduced to in the opening pages will collide with the faraway world that is meticulously described as 'hell'.

It does and the pieces placed, in this intricate chess game of a thriller, play their part.

The place in the title of the book is a top secret installation (above top secret) that experiments on children with slight powers of telekinesis or telepathy to enhance their abilities in ways that would have made Nazi scientists green with envy. The 'conscripts' into this program are treated no better than lab rats and the staff are all borderline psychopaths, sadists and outcasts who have found their true calling in the torture and abuse of children. The Institute exists above governmental control; the people there and the work they do is sponsored by a secret government, one that believes it is safeguarding the world by doing heinous things. The bombing of Coventry in WW2 resonates in the reasoning behind its existence, even if it never mentioned; to save the many, a few must be sacrificed. But in a such a cold, pernicious and nasty way?

Despite Luke being extremely clever, it isn't his functioning brain that interests the Institute, it's his latent and mild telekinetic powers and that is the first mistake this decades old 'thinktank' makes. Add to this mix Avery Dixon, an underdeveloped 10 year old who can read minds easier than anyone the Institute had seen for decades, who through his complicity with Luke to aid the latter's escape, is subjected to tests not designed for his level of ability. You give a low level telekinetic - can move an empty pizza box - a near death experience and it boosts their overall psychic abilities, especially when they join with the hive mind in the less attractive part of the Institute.

Luke's escape hinges not just on his unique brain and his ability to cut round corners, but also helps him befriend one of the people who should never have needed a friend. Luke helps this person and she enables him to escape, providing him with information that could bring the entire facility down on their heads. It obviously isn't as simple as that, but it is one of the more feasible of the long shots that King attempts to pull off. Coincidences and all that.

While Luke is engaged in his own carnage in South Carolina, meeting Tim in the process, back at the Institute Avery is setting in motion a chain of events that will leave another trail of dead people. He is also aware of Luke's idea - a gamble put in place designed to fail, because of a strategy underneath that only Luke and his now psychically linked friends know about. The tell tale line is when Tim, finally understanding what he's involved in, suggests to Luke that they're not returning to the Institute to save people and Luke replies, 'No, we're going to pick up the pieces.' The first time in years I got that crackle down my spine reading King's words.

Everything about the book is scarily possible, even in today's world and then just as you read and hope that the denouement will be as good as you hoped there is the one real cop-out. As well as channeling Firestarter, it also borrows themes from Philip K Dick's The Minority Report; the consequences of that idea wouldn't become clear until the epilogue.

Parts of the climax work exceptionally well, other parts feel like they've been ramped up to make a feature film sale more viable. To say the end of the Institute is far fetched is like suggesting the rest of the book isn't, but the plausibility of the book disappears in a conclusion that feels like it's going right back to Carrie but with the volume turned to 11 and that didn't work for me. I would have preferred less bangs and more buck - which might be why there's a long but ultimately unfulfilling epilogue. Everything could have been logical, even the set-up to cause the conclusion, but I feel it could have been handled in a way that cut out the disaster movie and still achieved a desirable conclusion.

It is, however, a cracking read. It has some excellent set-up lines, brilliant exchanges and King writes like he's remembered how to write likeable characters you give a fig about even if you've just seen a flash of their lives. He also channels his inner-villain to perfection with an array of baddies with cameos that make you realise almost always all hope is lost for anyone who enters this Godforsaken place. I can forgive some of the decisions made by the main cast for being caught up in the craziness, but others felt like they were done to reach a point where they may not have happened if it had played out in a real world setting. But that is what writing fiction is sometimes about; cliches exist because if they didn't there wouldn't be cliches.

I almost felt like it could have been a wee bit longer. Both Stackhouse and Sigsby - excellent villains, both instinctively evil in different, but effective, ways were almost superficial; ciphers for their general kind of person. Yet there was a sense that if King had told a little about their lives - more than a couple of almost afterthought lines - they might have been less unbelievable. The impression Ka was at work here was obvious, but carefully hidden; like King wanted us to know, for sure, this was not a story in a universe of dim follies.

I get the impression he's not done with this particular corner of his mind. I do feel we might see these characters again. It is incredibly good at using emotion as an excellent narrative.

It won't make any of my King top tens but it feels like he's actually revisited an old idea and probably done a better job. I'm giving this book a 7 out of 10