It: A Novel

Wow! What a book! I will admit I was completely taken aback by the SIZE of this... 1376 pages!!! I began this book back in September 2017 and read about 200 pages before I stopped for a while. I kept picking it up and stopping again over the next few months. But over the last month I have just been constantly reading this and it enthralled me. This story creeped me the hell out but I loved it. I’m sad this story is over. This is my favourite book by Stephen King.

O! M! G! This book is hard for me to review objectively because IT and I have history. (See what I just did there?). I've read it before you see, twice in fact. The first time, when I was young, closer in age to the kids in the book, I saw things from their perspective, and then, as I got older, I related to the adults more, and now, on my third visit, well, I just feel for them all. This epic book runs to one thousand one hundred and sixty-six pages and has such depth, not just in the characters, but in the history of the town in which they live, that in spite of its length, it has pace, firing you out from one chapter to the next. You read the first fifty pages and you're hooked, the next two hundred pass in a blur, of excitement, of reunion, of horror, and then, before you know it, you're half way through, but still, new things are happening. Like the shootout in front of the pharmacy in broad daylight, where half the town came armed and ready to kill. The explosion of 1906 that killed 88 kids on an Easter egg hunt. The great flood that washed half the town away decades before, and of course, the realisation that every twenty-seven years, kids go missing, die, left, right and centre, but with no one seeming to noticing, seeming to care. And why don't they notice, why don't they care? IT . . . that's why. IT has a hold over the town of Derry. People turn a blind eye, forget, dismiss, delude themselves that the missing and the dead left town, were trouble makers, fell out with their families, anything but admit the truth, but in the summer of '58', just as they break for summer vacation, seven kids become friends, become The Losers, and one of them, stuttering Bill, who lost his brother in the fall of '57', has a score to settle, a score that may well take him twenty-seven years to fulfil. To label this book would be an injustice, to label it horror would be plain wrong, because it's a, coming of age, thriller, horror, murder mystery, sci-fi, history book, all rolled into one, and I bet you can’t say that very often, and the other thing, the worst thing about this book, (there always has to be a 'but' it seems), is that once you've raced through the first nine hundred or so pages and the end is nigh, you want it to slow down, because deep down you know, that when you turn that last page, read that last paragraph, you're gonna be left with a massive hole where those Losers where and the biggest book hangover you've ever had. To give this book a star rating any less than six out of five would be a travesty, but as we're governed by convention I will have to settle for five. If you haven't yet taken a journey to Derry, never been to the Barrens and met Henry Bowers, been in the thick of an apocalyptic rock fight, smelt the scorched remains of the Black Spot, been chased from 29 Neibolt street by a leper, a werewolf or Pennywis...

I’ve been getting more into Stephen king for about the past couple months and I absolutely love this book but if your think this book is gonna be like the movie it is absolutely not at all like the movie there’s a lot of Smut and more in detail gore I normally skip over the Smut details tho so other than that I absolutely love this book!!

5 / 5 stars This is a tough review to write, because an 1100+ page doorstopper is a lot to take in and process. This book has become one of my all-time favorites (despite that scene), and I feel like I left a piece of my heart in the magically messed up town of Derry. I went into this almost completely blind - I hadn’t seen either the television series or the recent movies, but I knew the plot had something to do with a clown terrorizing children in the sewers and red balloons. I expected more horror, but instead I got a love letter to childhood, friendship, and summer, with undertones of loss, growing up, and growing apart. “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.” In true King fashion, the first 200 pages or so of this were slow. I found myself wondering what I got myself into, because one of my reading goals for 2020 was to read this book, but man, was it slow. Around page 500, I was completely hooked, and then by page 1000 I was ready for it to be done. Thankfully, for the most part, this was a thoroughly enjoyable ride, and I actually find myself missing the world of Derry. “It” has some of the best world building I’ve ever experienced. King’s tendency to over-describe and elaborate pulls through in this to make a town that seems so tangible, I had to remind myself that Derry isn’t actually a real place. From the barrens to the library, the sewers and the pharmacy, the standpipe and the park with the creepy Paul Bunyan statue, I had a detailed picture in my mind's eye. The wide cast of characters, including the town members like Mr. Keene, add to the realism of Derry. “But maybe I was wrong, he thought. Maybe this isn’t home, nor ever was—maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.” And the CHARACTERS. God, the characters. I love every member of the Losers Club, except for maybe Stanley. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say it’s a three way tie between Ben, Richie, and Bev. I loved watching them grow up and confront their past and fears while looking toward the future. I didn’t care for Stanley much, but that was because he was the most forgettable member of the club, and it felt like he was mainly there to bind the losers club together and serve as the realist.I thoroughly enjoyed both the past and the future, and still find myself thinking about the horrors the kids faced going against It in their younger days. I loved the Derry interlude chapters, and they really added a new layer of depth to the world. It was interesting learning the history of Derry through snippets of the past, and I thoroughly enjoyed the side stories of the Blac...

This is a classic. It is a must read to truly respect the town of Derry and the demise of it. And it’s fiction folks. Yes there is some teenage sexual situations if that kind of stuff offends you don’t read it. I myself sired a son at 13 so not much offended by anything. Sorry. I saw a review which rubbed me the wrong way. Don’t mind my blathering. So read it if you are a fan of the king. It’s a lot easier to read on the kindle. The hardback is massive.