Stephen King's new novel 'The Institute' mines familiar ground with psychic kids in duress

Young-adult literature is so pervasive that even Stephen King is diving in – though that master of the macabre American spirit was doing YA way before it was cool.

Works like “It,” “Carrie” and the novella “The Body” (aka “Stand by Me,” if you just watch the movies) predated the rise brought on by “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” and it’s those kinds of youngsters batting repression that King returns to with his new novel, “The Institute” (Scribner, 576 pp., ★★★ out of four stars).

Twelve-year-old genius Luke Ellis gets whisked away in the middle of the night from his parents and bright future and is stuck in a mysterious place with other latently psychic kids (some telekinetic, others telepathic) to, in effect, save the world. Good intentions, sure, but a nefarious way to go about it, with antagonistic and ruthless adults giving Luke and other children no choice but to bond over their torturous environment and foment revolutionary thoughts. They dream of escape while being tested in the Institute’s relatively cozy Front Half (cigarettes and alcohol for everyone!) and worry about “graduating” to Back Half, a concentration-camplike place with some serious weirdness afoot.

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That’s just half the story, however, because King has a whole other plotline going on right from the beginning of the book. Tim Jamieson is a disgraced Florida cop who’s flying to New York City for a potential gig as a security guard, has a feeling that he needs to give up his spot on the plane and instead winds up in small-town South Carolina as a patrolling “night knocker” for the local police.

But as soon as you start really getting to know him, Tim disappears for a few hundred pages while Luke and his cohorts are introduced, and the results are a bit disjointed. Like two distinct TV shows that end up with a prime-time crossover, you figure Luke and Tim’s paths will streamline together, but it does lead to quite a propulsive and satisfying finale.

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King mines his own familiar territory in both instances – Tim’s new locale of DuPray is filled with the kind of lovable oddballs that have always pervaded the writer's work, and Luke and Co. in the Institute reflect everything from the psychic-kid-on-the-run theme of “Firestarter” to the type of youthful power in King's novels that so inspired “Stranger Things.”

“I think we’re all losers,” one girl says, a not-so-subtle reference to the Losers’ Club of “It.” (It’s also probably no coincidence this book’s releasing on the heels of “It: Chapter Two” in theaters – it’s King’s world, man, and we’re just avoiding the clowns.)

Yet even though King’s writing still has the gumption, folksiness and, sure, full-on creepiness his Constant Readers have always loved, “The Institute” is missing the appealing vim and vigor displayed in the author’s recent foray into detective work with the outstanding “Mr. Mercedes” trilogy and spinoff-of-sorts “The Outsider.” Those works – and last year’s surprisingly uplifting “Elevation” – felt like an icon stretching himself, and you don’t have to be a psychic to figure out there’s a lot of “been there, read that” with “The Institute.”

That said, King does well inserting a certain modern relevancy, and not just with the subtle shots (and others, not so much) at his social-media foil, Donald Trump. One rural Southern area is described as a place where “Obamacare is looked upon as a libtard blasphemy, and a trip to Walmart is considered an occasion.” There are certain aspects of Luke’s situation that eerily resemble what’s happening in real life with kids at the Mexican border, though in other instances it’s like the X-Men if Professor X was a sadistic stooge always trying to save his own keister.

With “The Institute,” King leans into the theme of “great events” happening with the smallest of decisions as well as the world-changing power of togetherness. And in that case, it’s a frequent lesson he extols that never gets old.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Stephen King's 'The Institute' goes back to the well with psychic kids