The Institute - Stephen King
A good read, but not a great read. King is a prolific writer and it is a joy to tear through his digestible and straight-forward prose. His characters are always well-drawn, and quick to become familiar - The Institute is no exception. King has a list of great novels to his name: Carrie, Misery, The Shining, and It, to name but a few; The Institute is not one of these novels, despite its interesting premise.
The Institute starts out brilliantly, with a good 50 pages of solid setup in which the stakes are raised and tension is piled on brilliantly. It’s at the midpoint that things start to become a little, well, pointless. I just didn’t feel the need to carry on reading.
I also felt the denouement to be a let-down. There’s much talk of children possessing telepathic and telekinetic powers; it would have been nice to actually see them use those powers for little more than a few spare pages out of almost six-hundred.
As I mentioned, King is a writer capable of brilliance, and The Institute had potential, but the potential wasn’t fully realised this time around.
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Like this post on Instagram here.
Follow @whatjamesread on Instagram.
Find me on Goodreads here.
Buy The Institute on Apple Books or Amazon.
