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"Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination." - Willy W.
In this recurring piece I'll be going book by book through the King's archive and providing mid new insights and expert literary analysis while ranking them in a system that is totally objective.
It's no secret Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers of all time. He famously can spit out new material faster than the Philly Phanatic can shoot a hot dog down a fans throat in the first row of the Diamond Club.
Recently with travel I've been picking up more and more King books at the airport kiosks and have been, by and large enjoying them. Dense material that lasts longer than the flight but can keep you engaged is hard to come by.
With the influx of Stephen King in my life I've found my reactions have been mostly positive but have run the gauntlet as far as if the material met my expectations. Maybe desire is a better word than expectations. I've never absorbed so much of one authors work in a short period of time so the whip lash in story narrative has been interesting to go through. Even with aforementioned whip lash King's deft character creation, dialogue, and sense of dread he builds into a crescendo help ease the reader into each new story.
So with that being said, here's the roadmap.
I'll be reading and reviewing King's books in no particular order. I'll be going by my gut. Granted it is not what it used to be (my body has started rejecting beer and it's one of the sadder things that's ever happened to me).
The first reviewed book will automatically start in the pole position.
#1. The Institute
One of the benefits of going to my local Lowe's store (which I hate, it's a long story), is the proximity to Barnes & Noble. I love B&N and have been frequenting them since I was a kid when my dad used to take us to the Burger King nearby for lunch and a book or two after at B&N every other week.
Recently after picking up some more bullshit for my house I took a quick stroll over to the B&N to peruse the selection of horror and sci-fi novels with the intention of selecting a King novel. I had just read through another on a flight and was keen to get my hands on another.
The Institute jumped out as I had never heard of it before. That's not entirely surprising given his volume of work but as it wasn't one of major titles I would have recognized I picked it up and bought it.
The synopsis on the back of the book is as follows:
In the middle of the night, intruders silently murder young Luke Ellis's parents and steal him away from his suburban Minneapolis home--an operation that takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up in a faraway room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are several other doors, behind which are several other kids with very special abilities, and who arrived at wherever here is in the same way Luke did. They're all localized in the area known as Front Half, which is a good thing--no one ever returns from Back Half. Nevertheless, the incarcerated children are intended to serve, given that the staff is ruthlessly dedicated to extracting the force of their extranormal gifts. Cooperation is rewarded and resistance means brutality. And as each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes increasingly desperate to somehow find a way out and get help--even though no one has ever escaped from the living hell known as the Institute....
With the overview above in mind, I don't think in any of these reviews I'll be diving into significant spoilers. And frankly most of these books will have been out for so long it's impossible to spoil them, but this is more of a blanket statement absolving me from any pissed off Stephen King fans who will be by their nature more likely to write me long essay formatted hate mail.
Like all of Stephen King's work, The Institute has memorable protagonists that are introduced in a manner that we immediately start to empathize with their emotional/mental state and begin to root for them. There are two introductions for King to make in this novel and each is well crafted, especially given the juxtaposition of the immediate circumstances they find themselves in.
The first, an adult wanderer, Tim Jamieson, enters into the readers imagination with a mundane and simple focus on where his walking shoes currently find him. We fully understand his surroundings and character with immediacy.
The second introduction of the true lead character, Luke Ellis, as you can glean from the synopsis above, is jarring and terrifying.
Table setting is my favorite strength of King's. It doesn't matter the character or story, his novels draw you in and keep you there. Sometimes the conclusion is satisfying, sometimes not, hey that's life. But I have always been welcomed in by his opening acts.
Act 1 carries The Institute as far as it can which is quite a ways in my opinion. He does a masterful job of instilling the horrific brutality being visited upon Luke and the children abducted by the nefarious Institute. It's well noted already but King's ability to so effortlessly conjure up horrible things happening to kids is stomach churning. I feel it taps into some primal fear where you're at your most helpless and of course, that makes perfect sense. The horrible position they are put in makes the fight to escape and get some semblance of vengeance all the better. You don't have to stretch to want to see that happen.
Act 2 consists of Luke leading the children against the Institute and doing everything he can to escape and undermine their operation.
Act 3 is of course the conclusion which consists of revelations of the big question:
Why the fuck are you doing this?
Unfortunately for me, and probably some other readers, I feel it just doesn't pay off.
The novel sets despair and fear in so well early and often that when we learn of the reasoning why these experiments are being visited on these innocent kids, the reason itself falls flat.
One of the final confrontations also has a turn in a less serious, almost cartoonish way of bringing about the end of a gun fight. It's a stark change from the narrative tone of the earlier segments and I feel it just didn't work. Without naming any, I enjoyed the characters who were able to escape the story relatively unscathed, with their lives if not their minds, to fight another day etc. It just didn't feel earned.
As I write this I'm sure Stephen King would say "well fuck you buddy, your writing is shit!". He wouldn't be wrong, but most likely he would not care in the slightest. I'll keep working on that and hopefully suck less each time I type one of these out. Maybe one day if I'm lucky he'll notice and yell at me personally. A man can dream.
I did enjoy the book overall. I'm consciously comparing it some of his other work I've enjoyed from start to finish and as a result it was easier to critique the areas that were under cooked (IMO (In my opinion)). I wouldn't have attempted my own half baked analysis if not for the strength of the body of work (honestly I'm really trying not to kiss his ass).
I imagine as I get to his other books The Institute will fall down in the rankings. But at least for today, it's sitting at #1.
Rating: 3/5 King's
