The Institute

A Novel

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Santino Fontana

A 2020 Thriller/Suspense Audie Award winner!

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2019 selection

From number one New York Times best-selling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It.

“This is King at his best” (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out."

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is “is another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable, all at once” (The Boston Globe).

©2019 Stephen King (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio

Critic reviews

"Stephen King's newest audiobook is compulsively entertaining and features a dazzling performance by narrator Santino Fontana.... Fontana does wonders with this diverse lineup of young characters who band together to fight their captors. Each of them sounds authentic and unique. Meanwhile, the adult characters, with a few exceptions, are a nightmarish bunch. Through them, Fontana shows that evil can have many different voices.... [King's] and Fontana's talents are a winning combination." (AudioFile magazine)

Not number one, but still a really good read!

Spoiler Free Review:
This really was a good read and I don't think it was as incredibly predictable as some people claim. There were certainly aha moments, where you could piece together what was going on with the Institute and where things were going to go. In general though I wasn't predicting every little thing and waiting for things I knew would happen. the book still kept me guessing. Yes, this is not a terribly uncommon premise for a book, but I think King added enough of a unique twist to make it a nice addition to the collection of stories about kids getting kidnapped for experimental psychic testing.

It is a bit long and drags a tiny bit in some parts (any longer book will have this problem), so if a big book intimidates you, this might not be for you. Also, as the description for the book reveals, this is a book with quite a bit of unpleasant things happening to children, so if you're not a fan of child abuse, this probably isn't a book for you either.

I really enjoyed the narrator for this book. Like a lot of novels it is read in third person and the narrator has a "narrator voice" he uses. However, if the third person observation is the thoughts of a specific character, is describing what a specific character is doing, or is just about a certain character, he will use that character's voice instead of the narrator one. I thought this was a nice touch and I haven't heard it done like that before (although I will say I haven't read THAT many books on Audible yet so it could actually be very common). He did struggle a little bit with accents, but it wasn't the worst I've ever heard and personally didn't find it overly distracting.

The characters were all fairly interesting. There was strong development of our main characters throughout the book and I was able to connect and feel for them and their struggles. There were maybe a few too many side characters that didn't add as much to the story and could have been left out, but overall I enjoyed the main ones and understood their emotions, struggles, and growth in the story.

Overall, I would recommend the read. Although not an incredibly unique premise, it was still well written and brought some interesting ideas to the table. It has a dark atmosphere like any traditional King book, but still has that sliver of hope that everyone will get out okay. If you want to find out what happens to Luke and his friends and the secret of The Institute, you should dive in and find out!

With Spoiler Review:
I did not expect the book to go the way it did. I expected it to be almost entirely about the main characters' time in the Institute and maybe the last section be an escape. Based on the fact so many people in the reviews described it as boring and incredibly predictable, I was actually really surprised that a basic story about children being tortured for their powers and a simple escape at the end was actually NOT what I got.

Instead we open with the story of Tim and how he ends up in a small town in South Carolina (which at the time was weird, but we soon learn why he's important to the story). It then shifts to the main story of Luke and his time in The Institute. For the first 2/3 of the book we follow Luke and the abuse him and his friends have to go through. The reader is left in the dark for a LONG time on what exactly is going on at the Institute. You're given bits and pieces and it is possible to guess and figure out (especially if you have seen movies/read other books with a similar premise). Since it's not a new story, figuring out Big Brother is real, is not incredibly hard to figure out.

2/3 of the way into the book, Luke actually escapes quite easily and the rest of the story is about his revenge, trying to stay safe, getting the other kids out, and finally learning all the details of what's happening at the Institute. This is also where Tim comes back into the story as he helps Luke on this journey of revenge and freeing his friends. A secret organization trying to protect the world from itself and abusing kids to do it (again, not an incredibly new story, but still has a unique way of telling it). At the end Luke and a few of his friends are able to escape after a pretty intense climax at the institute. We find out there are many like this one around the world and that they all came crashing down (literally) because of the children and their revolt.

The book finishes with the children escaping and going on to live their lives free, but with the remains of the institute still existing. Will the institutes come back? King leaves it open for the reader to guess if this world will once again see the secret kidnapping and abuse of children for the "good of the world". At least for now we know that a few children are free, including Luke, and they get to go to live "normal" lives.

I would be interested to see if there will be a sequel to this with Luke and his friends as adults coming back to defeat a reformed Institute, It Part 2 style. Or maybe even a prequel going into how the Institutes first started and the experiences of the different kids trapped there. I guess time will tell. It would also be cool to see King expand on the Institute and it's leading organization. This book goes through a lot about what the one location does and how it fits into the bigger whole, but I would have liked to see at least a little more about this secret Illuminati like organization that runs the operation. It was a great read and I enjoyed the journey. It's far from perfect and somehow still needed a little more despite it's length. There were some sections that could have been left out or at least tidied up a little bit, but that is usually the case with King books and for me is something I've grown to like with his style.

This was a great read and I recommend taking a look!

eh!

Not much substance and it ended in such a way that was easy to guesstimate.

I liked the narrator more than the story.

Liked it very much.

I haven’t read/heard much Stephen king until now, this book made me want more!

I don’t mind character voice acting when quoting characters, but it was somewhat annoying to hear the narrator read whole sections (“fly on the wall”) with voice acting for the character in focus. Besides that I enjoyed the narration and the voices applied to the characters.

Great story. Reminds me of Eyes of the Dragon

I like this book. Its really good. I've got 8 hours left and I got it 2 days ago. It makes it hard to listen to with Santino Fontana's awful performance! And he's a BROADWAY ACTOR. Where's WILL PATTON?!?!?! He's doing his best but its still awful. I'm just sad I've waited such a long time to get this book the day it comes out and I guess its ok that every single man in the book sounds the same! But it's still a good book and Fontana does a decent job.

really good

Almost didn't download because of some of the reviews I read. I'm so glad I did I couldn't stop listening.

Wonderful!!!!!!

Story-line: Suspenseful, intriguing and intense!
Characters: Well-developed characters. I love the Tim & Luke duo!
Narration: Fantastic! I love this narrator who also voiced the book "You".
Overall: I read this in two days and couldn't put it down! I highly recommend!

Reminds me of old Stephen King

This book is outstanding - easily King's best work since 11/22/63 - but more broadly it reminds me of the... I guess, "special" feeling of King's earlier works, like Christine or The Dead Zone or Firestarter, the book this most closely resembles. It feels like an event, like something that will become shorthand in the cultural lexicon, like Cujo or Jack Torrance. This is a great book. I hope King has some more like this left in him.

loved this story except...

this story kept me intrigued the entire time! I couldn't wait to get in my car and start listening to find out what was going to happen next. I loved some characters and really disliked some, all of them were interesting. what I really didn't need and the reason for the 4 stars instead of 5 is Stephen King inserting his political bias in the story. we all get enough of that in our every day lives and I like to read to get away from that for a little while.

Great book, childish politics

While I enjoyed this book, Stephen Kings’ TDS
Seeps out 4-5 times with snarky references to president Trump. It is hard to understand the hate in an author that would cause him to write such childish remarks in an otherwise great book.

Good Book but...

... were the immature political jabs necessary? These comments seem to have been added willy-nilly and served no purpose whatsoever.