"The Institute" by Stephen King

Above: The Institute - Stephen King - 557 pages.

Look. The idea of "elites" managing world affairs by assassination arising from the collective, "managed," powers of kidnapped, telekinetic and telepathic kids is a pretty wild idea.

I completed reading this book today.

Following is the generic Amazon blurb:

"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 Stephen King's gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don't always win."

Bishop Comments:

I ask myself whether its worth spending this period of my life reading this type of stuff. I've read much of Stephen King, but, much earlier in my life... before I realized that I have a limited time in life to fill in all of the learning gaps left either because I was working too hard, watching inane TV sports/news, or, reading.... well, Stephen King.

I confess to reading another King book last year: "Cell." This book was about a strange cellular signal that turned people into zombies if they happened to be on their cell phones at the time the signal was emitted. The story is about how a group of people who didn't get the zombie signal find out the source of the signal (in Maine, where else?) and, fighting zombies all the way from Boston to the source, reach the source and neutralize it.

One thing you have to admit about King is that he has an extraordinary imagination and that he is able, using American colloquial lingo, to write his stories in a way to keep you turning pages even when you don't want to.

I read once where King writes "stream of consciousness" where very little editing and rewrites are required.

A friend once told me that one of the prerequisites to living a sane life was to read pure escape fiction regularly. I guess I'll have to use that as my excuse for reading another King novel.

Look. The idea of "elites" managing world affairs by assassination arising from the collective, "managed," powers of kidnapped, telekinetic and telepathic kids is a pretty wild idea. Notwithstanding the two or three obligatory King digs at Donald Trump, read the book; you won't want to put it down.