Publisher – Hodder & Stoughton

Published – Out Now

Price - £20 Hardcover £9.49 Kindle

Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts - telepathy, telekinesis - for concentrated effect. 

Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use...

Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career.

Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.

But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect.

When we talk blurring of boundaries I tend to focus on mash-ups. Literary fiction mixed with magic for example where the blurring is obvious. With Horror I think the blurring is trickier as horror is more the impact of a situation that can fall sometimes into which could be labelled as any situation. The final nominee in Blurred Boundaries is Stephen King’s The Institute where SF and horror collide – albeit for me not quite satisfactory.

In South Caroline we first meet Tim Jamieson a policeman with a past who is on an impulse travelling around the US has stopped off in a small little town and taken a job as a night knocker – someone who looks after a small town after dark but without arrest powers or guns. He is on the look for a new start; across the US though something evil is happening to special kids. We meet Luke Ellis a 12-year-old prodigy who is about to go to college early, loving parents but just a strange habit of when he gets excited to see objects move around him. One horrible night he is drugged and taken violently from his parents. He wakes up in the Institute to meet kids. He is informed he is serving his country as he has unique abilities they wish to use. But the Kids in the Front Half of the Institute he meets know this isn’t true; they know they will all soon be sent to the Back Half and there they will never be seen again. Luke and a few friends try to work out how they can get back to the normal world and Tim Jamieson will become a key player in a battle to come.

I feel this is a story with three very weird fitting thirds. The initial beginning to the tale is very classic King we see Tim’s and Luke’s life described briskly to give us senses of who these people are. Tim is introduced and then goes silent for nearly three quarters of the story. The key focus is on Luke who despite his intellect is painted very much a normal teenage boy but one who slowly gets broken by the institute as he realises the extent of what they’re doing to him. The initial scenes here are unpleasant we soon see this is more prison than lab and there is a huge cast of Institute employees who see their wards more as pests to be controlled rather than children to be cared for. That’s the strongest part of the tale by far and powered me through to see where the story ends.

I had a number of issues though with the structure and approach. The kids of the story don’t feel like those of 2020. Web, culture references and phones hardly get mentioned – King usually has a good ear for younger voices, but this feels like a story very much of the past. I struggle to think a teenager now would be familiar with the Fall of the House of Usher. This ties into the theme which I think is that people can very easily do horrible things for what they consider the greater good. If this story was set in the early 2000s with the realisation about various US Govt torture centres at the time that would actually have been a really interesting placement but this story feels very out of time bar a few Trumpian put downs. I was hoping for a lot more to explain why is this all going on and the final chapters have a very stark takedown/infodump that comes out of nowhere and while tries to explain it all felt hollow in execution. I think my final issue was the lack of connection between Tim and Luke’s story. Tim pretty much vanishes until Luke escapes and we see things have been happening. Narratively he feels very functional as Luke’s guardian, but the pacing feels off a bit more balance to both tales that eventually collide may have worked better. The final confrontation scene I do think is quite tense and in places heart wrenching but it’s a long way to get there.

Narratively as always King knows to tell a story and creates a cast you love/dislike and there is enough here that it’s a comfortable horror read. You care when hose we love are injured and in danger and I did like the way Luke changes over the novel. These events will traumatise him as they would in real life but I’m aware of better King tales that explore similar subjects so while a decent read not going to be haunted by this for years to come. In summary a very standard horror tale and one that for me didn’t really do anything particularly new with its SF dimension plus it’s various elements didn’t really gel in the way I was hoping for.