Stephen King

Welcome to Derry, Maine...

It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.

Molly M

Chaitanya Baranwal

** spoiler alert **
           My longest read of the year (and longest read in a while!), reminding me the importance and power of remembering our childhood.

It is a horror book + coming-of-age tale. It's about a group of friends that have to face something unspeakable they faced 27 years ago, only this time as adults. Ultimately, what I took away is that childhood tendencies often have a strength that adults tend to forget over time. Vibrant imaginations, unyielding loyalties and the courage to do what often seems impractical (yet right) are virtues adults let go of, but they might help us in times of desperation and helplessness.

Stephen King writes really well, I super enjoyed the prose of the book and the depth of characters! I could feel their desperation and helplessness at times, although at rare times I felt the book was slightly draggy. I also think some threads were totally unnecessary and even harmful (what's with the sex scene at the end??). There's gore, but nothing that's over the top.

Definitely one of my top reads, and I'm so happy I picked this book up and went through all the way :)

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.

A Novel

Almost certainly the longest book I’ve ever read, and yet I wouldn’t want it to be any shorter. Every single page is earned. The utter mastery of the pacing, the world- and character-building, the emotionality, is incredible. 

Considered knocking off half a star for the frequency of physical descriptions of the women characters, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Though be aware that it’s there. Sexuality and desire, though, end up being key themes of the book, and it’s a nuanced, thoughtful approach and appreciation. 

The book is scary, yes, and violent. But what sticks with me most is the warmth of It. It is, at its heart, a story about friendship and love. About adolescence and memory and time. It is deeply thoughtful, nostalgic, and hopeful. Dark in content but so bright in theme and pathos. It is of course, a masterpiece. And It is a work of love. 

Michael Klepacki

Almost certainly the longest book I’ve ever read, and yet I wouldn’t want it to be any shorter. Every single page is earned. The utter mastery of the pacing, the world- and character-building, the emotionality, is incredible. 

Considered knocking off half a star for the frequency of physical descriptions of the women characters, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Though be aware that it’s there. Sexuality and desire, though, end up being key themes of the book, and it’s a nuanced, thoughtful approach and appreciation. 

The book is scary, yes, and violent. But what sticks with me most is the warmth of It. It is, at its heart, a story about friendship and love. About adolescence and memory and time. It is deeply thoughtful, nostalgic, and hopeful. Dark in content but so bright in theme and pathos. It is of course, a masterpiece. And It is a work of love. 

As a Mainer, SK hits such a specific note that only those born and raised in Maine can really connect with. 

When I realized what “It” is supposed to symbolize…damn.

I adore the kids and their relationships with each other. I love how openly affectionate they are with each other, sharing such a strong relationship that is more than friendship, formed between those with deep shared trauma. The end was lovely and cathartic as much as it was devastating. I adore this book.

 scene was interesting, but I buy it. Barring a few strange details, I appreciated it.

Bowie 

What a ride 

As a Mainer, SK hits such a specific note that only those born and raised in Maine can really connect with. 

When I realized what “It” is supposed to symbolize…damn.

I adore the kids and their relationships with each other. I love how openly affectionate they are with each other, sharing such a strong relationship that is more than friendship, formed between those with deep shared trauma. The end was lovely and cathartic as much as it was devastating. I adore this book.

And yeah that scene was interesting, but I buy it. Barring a few strange details, I appreciated it.

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.
source: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/It/Stephen-King/9781508217114

This book is best as an audio book. It really distinguishes the characters and brings them to life. The book is beautifully written and descriptive. The only reason it is not 5 stars is because of the ending - what’s with the all powerful turtle god? And also because of the frequent use of racial slurs. I understand the time frame it’s written in but it’s harsh on the ears and the slurs are used a lot more than necessary. 

Tabitha T

Kairos

It took me a total year to finish, longest book I've ever read, but it's worth the investment. The story was so good, it keeps you going and wanting more. I am however a bit disappointed in the climax where the kids/adults were trying to kill IT, the story turned from horror to cosmic fantasy 360. Still enjoyed the ending nonetheless, but that horror the book had been building up since the beginning was long gone.

Lara Engle

When my students saw this book sitting on my desk, they invariably asked two questions: "Are you really reading that?" and "How many pages is it, anyway?!" I mean, it's a book 1 1/2 times the length of Moby Dick. It's Stephen King. And it is It.

One of King's most popular stories (probably at least partially because of the 1990 movie starring Tim Curry), It lives up to its hype. It's not just good, it's incredibly good. I mean that literally. It's almost unbelievable how good. King's storytelling, characterization, and mythology are all on point. The structure is original but organized. The references to other works, particularly The Dark Tower series, are understandable for those who haven't read the other works, but rich in meaning and symbolism for those who have. The characters are real, heroic, flawed, and humanly consistent. Even the town of Derry becomes a character and its townspeople contribute layers of interest and meaning. Most importantly, just like all the best Stephen King works, It mixes the human with the supernatural in ways that feel real. The themes are identifiable. In this book, we see that the world is a scary place, adults don't always see kids or protect them, and that love and friendship are the most powerful forces in the universe. We may not all identify with the idea of a freaking terrifying clown lurking in the sewers, but who can't relate to those themes?

I said once before (in my review of Joyland) that Stephen King was getting nostalgic as he ages. I realize now that he has always been nostalgic. This book creates the feeling of nostalgia in me for 1958, and I was only 8 years old in 1985 when he finished writing It. His tendency to write horror into everyday things like pets, cars, hotels, and clowns is a form of nostalgia in itself. He shows us that the everyday can be terrifying, but that we can overcome our fear.

Briar's Reviews

** spoiler alert **
           Title: It
Author: Stephen King
Date Read: September 8th - September 16th, 2016
Date Reviewed: September 18th, 2016
Spoilers Ahead?: Yes!

Introduction: I heard there was a new It movie coming out through Collider Movie Talk on Youtube, so I decided that I wanted to watch not only the new movie, but the Tim Curry one. I had recently rewatched Rocky Horror and Clue and I remembered how much I loved Tim Curry as a child, so why not watch a horror film with him in it when I'm an adult? I prefer to read the books before the movie, so going in I can understand any plot holes the films leave hanging around. It took me a long while to find this book, but when I did I started reading it ASAP. And for over 1100 pages, I managed to finish it in under two weeks.

Quick Summary: Derry, Maine is a small town with a big problem - It. It, a dark creature, is killing kids left and right and it seems to appear in a cycle, about every thirty years. When a group of kids that were not killed by It come back to Derry, they are going to have to face their greatest fear - Pennywise.

Evaluations: In short, this book is super weird but it is also well written and the plot was well thought up. I was under the impression this book would just be about some psycho killer clown, but it is so much more! Pennywise/Robert Gray/It is not just a clown, he/it is a supernatural entity. You can tell that this is true through how it changes into different creatures throughout the novel (vampire, werewolf, mummy, the dead kids, Pennywise, spider, etc). I wasn't impressed by the fact that this was supernatural, since I really wanted Stephen King to just write some strange killer clown story, but somehow that supernatural aspect was the only negative part of the book. Every chapter has a reason for being there (even if some of them are painful to get through or seem worthless when you are reading it. I'm not kidding, for a while someone is making a hamburger) and everything ends up connecting at the end or becoming part of the theme. There is definitely some weirder scenes that seem out of place - Beverly sleeps with all the boys out of nowhere - but if you try to pick apart themes within this work, you can place these strange scenes for that purpose.
Overall, I liked it! It did require me to do some research as to why the weird scenes exist so I would understand why they were necessary, but the book was worth it. 

Plot: The plot is relatively simple - a supernatural entity (We'll call it Pennywise in this review), kills kids every thirty years or so in a cycle. It kills Bill's brother and goes after Bill and six of his friends. The kids somehow escape Derry and end up coming back to Derry as an adult when Pennywise has reappeared in the cycle to kill more kids. Bill, Bev, Eddie, Ben, Mike, Richie, and Stan come back as adults, and they have to remember how they got rid of It as kids. And then, they decide they are going to kill It for good.

That is the 1100 plot in short - there is definitely a lot going on in this book. A lot of tough subjects are brought up in the book and written relatively well (abuse, childhood, innocence, homophobia, racism, sexism, imagination, among others), but there were some points that left me a little bitter.

Stephen King has Beverly sleep with all the men/boys (when I read the novel, I took it as a kid she slept with all the boys and made them lose their virginity, but some readers have expressed they believe it happens when they are adults. Stephen King does not always make it clear in the novel when he hops along the timeline). This chapter sat rather strange with me because she had not interacted with other boys in that way before, yet she somehow knew what she was doing and had relatively no pain. It wasn't realistic (I know this is a supernatural story) and it just didn't sit well with me. It also, at first, doesn't make sense why in the world this is included other than to make this a more rated R story, but it fits into some of the theming within the novel.

I also had an issue with the nonlinear aspect of the novel. I appreciated the novel jumping back and forth from childhood to adulthood with these characters, but I would have liked the chapter to express that everytime it jumped so I wasn't left wondering which timeline version of Pennywise they injured and how certain relationships kept going back and forth from great to meh.

Characters: "It" has a lot of characters, so I'm only going to focus on a few of them.
Pennywise - The demonic entity with many names was an interesting character. Stephen King does write in Pennywise's point of view, and I felt like that kind of ruined the mystery of Pennywise. Up until that point, I was excited for Pennywise's scenes and I was trying to figure out his motives, but then when the POV came around it ruined it all for me. 
Once I got over Pennywise being a demonic entity and not just a really cool psycho clown, Pennywise becomes an interesting character. It induces fear into children and does not appear to adults (minus the kids that then become Adults, and somehow Bill's wife Audra). I was left wondering why this demon kills kids, and there wasn't much of an explanation that I found. Perhaps after further research I may find theories from others, but I was really left hanging. 
The character was scary, and that was great for this novel! When Pennywise did appear, whether it was as the clown, the spider or anything else, it was thrilling. He was well written, so I'm impressed!

Beverly - Beverly is the only female in the Losers' Club, and as both a child and as an adult she appears to be the sex symbol. She slept with all the boys, Bill and Ben love her, and she has constant abuse against her from her Father and her Husband. I wish Stephen King wrote better female characters - strong ones, independent ones, not totally sexualized ones - but alas, he does not. His male characters shine! His females seem to suffer. 
The aspect I liked about Beverly was I could fit her to the theming of this novel. While she may not be a strong, independent woman, she can help a reader tear apart of the themes!

Bill / Audra - Bill is kind of the main character throughout the story, and his wife is Audra (he also cheats with Bev because he still loves her, but those feelings disappear as soon as they sleep together even though they both enjoyed it together more than with their spouses). Bill stutters, and as soon as Pennywise is gone at the end of the story he doesn't stutter anymore. Of course, because he's the main character he gets a hot wife, and he gets his school boy crush to sleep with him, because he's the main character. He also becomes a famous writer and gets super rich!! 
But aside from his character, it's his part of the plot that frustrated me. While Bill is a smart character and his action/horror scenes are great, he leaves some plot holes for reader speculation. His stutter disappearing makes me wonder what caused them, and it really left me hanging. Readers have theories, but not one distinct one. Also, near the end of the novel Audra is essentially comatose, yet when she gets in their vehicle and they start driving she's magically back to normal. Was this because Pennywise is gone? Because they left Derry? There's no explanation, and again, readers can't agree on the why, just that is happened.

Themes/Creativity: This book is super creative and has theming. Whoever comes up with a clown that is also a vampire, mummy, frankenstein's monster, werewolf and spider and can make a best selling book out of it is clearly creative.

But now for the themes.
Adolescence/Childhood/Innocence/Imagination/etc - Stephen King addresses the move from innocence into experience well. Bullying, familial issues, crushes and more situations that kids face are addressed in this novel. He does an excellent job, and I could go on and on about the hundreds of scenes he has written, but I want to address one theme within this one.
Beverly sleeping with all the boys appears to be out of place, until you start placing themes together. When you read the chapter before, Beverly figures out how they must destroy Pennywise. (When you read in the story that Eddie makes his asthma inhaler spray out acid at Pennywise, this connects as well) Bev decides to sleep with all the boys and take their virginity - at first it seems very odd, but then you realize she is taking their innocence away from them. In some strange way, this shows the move from innocence to experience. To be able to defeat Pennywise, they need to be able to be imaginative, but they also have to eventually become adults. 
The Losers' Club couldn't have kids, which shows they are more "innocent" than "experienced". An adult has to lie to children and make kids believe it, yet they know that they are not telling the truth. They can tell a lie like it's honest, like warning kids not to go out at night because there are clowns in the storm drain. Adults might know that is not true, but they can lie and make it seem true. Kids would believe this, and then they would try to think up ways to kill this evil clown so they can stay out later - like acid from the asthma medication. It tastes like acid, so why isn't it acid? Kids have wild imaginations, and only when they move from innocence to experience do they lose some of their imagination.

King also addresses topics such as racism, sexism, domestic abuse, prejudice, and more, but I wanted to focus on that adolescence topic. In all of his themes, he does a magnificent job.

Uniqueness: After reading Carrie, I can definitely say this book is unique. Not only for just any old writer, but for Stephen King. It addresses theories yet is a thriller/horror novel. It has a clown that is a demonic entity that is also every fear the kids have come to life. This book is definitely unique, and I haven't found anything like it!

Strengths: Stephen King putting themes into the novel was a real strength. The fact that I could pick apart the novel and try to make theories made my inner fan girl self super happy.
The plot all being significant to the story was also a real strength. Most novels have filler chapters, but everything mattered in this book!
The time line - while it is also a major weakness, jumping from the past to the present helped build the story!

Weaknesses:
The women were really stale - I would love for Stephen King to write a strong, female character in the future.
The demonic entity was a bit of a let down / weakness. The "big reveal" of the supernatural aspect leaves a lot of readers feeling cheated. I would have rather the kids just have wild imaginations that made them see vampires and werewolves chasing them since they were told not to stay out after 7pm rather than the demon becoming those creatures.
The timeline - more notice about what time period the chapters were in would have been nice.

Score: 5 out of 5. Throughout this entire novel I was glued to it! Rarely do I find a novel where every page has me hooked (especially a 1100 page novel!).

Brian

It es algo mágico y tenebroso, son muchos miedos, es la inocencia y ese desespero del humano por no crecer, por quedarnos en la infancia, nuestro lugar seguro, porque allí nada es más grande que nuestra imaginación.

Karis Ryu

Some of the best worldbuilding I've ever seen, both about the town and the entire cosmology of the universe it's set in. The history and color and tenderness and love that have gone into building the universe of the book immediately make it a great read. The horror is sensational and incredibly written, but It is ultimately a love letter to the fleeting, thrilling beauty of childhood, of memory, and the bittersweet necessity of goodbyes in a world where everyone lives in circles anyway.

Asdfghjkl; as long as it is, there were moments that the writing struck my heart and just DID something to me in how beautiful and accurate it was. It is a long read, though, and a lot to process, and extremely graphic.

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good place to live. It was the children who saw – and felt – what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one’s deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing . . .

The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

Frightening, epic, and brilliant, Stephen King's IT is one of the greatest works of a true storytelling master.
--front flap

Krystyna 

This was a book that I put off reading for a very long time because of the size and content. I am not a fan of clowns. But, I heard great things about this book and that it was about so much more than a clown. I decided to read it with a friend. We had both been wanting to read it and knew that if we read it as a buddy read we would both be held more accountable.
This book was a really enjoyable read and it started out strong. I found this book to be pretty gripping and intense at times. There were parts of this book that was definitely difficult to read because it deals with heavy topics. I also really liked the characters and I felt connected to them because you got to see them as kids and as adults. The only complaint I really had with this book was I felt that the ending was abrupt, like he was just over writing this book and wanted to rush the ending to be finished. However, the ending wasn’t necessarily bad; I just wanted more from the ending.
I also accompanied this book with the audiobook and the narrator was fantastic! Highly recommend the audio.

S. King

Wynter

** spoiler alert **
           Things I had a bit of an issue with:
- After much build-up, Tom disappointingly dies in the background. Same with Audra, as she gets kidnapped by Tom and BAM! their scene is done. I wish we get to see what happened from their perspective instead of Pennywise just providing the information
- I still don't see how underage sex fit into the plot. 
- Whatever happened to the power of seven? I guess they didn't need Stan and Mike (Beverly too, since the grown up her did no fighting whatsoever)
- We never got a chance to see the real form of It, since the spider was just another mask
- Who is this Other? I get the Turtle, but what's up with that Other?
- Beverly's younger self was much gutsier, braver, more independent. Why did she turn into such a shriveling mouse?

Things that I loved:
- The story. Period. It was awesome!
- The characters were beautifully fleshed out; every one had a distinct voice and a life of their own.
- Pennywise is so damn scary, I am now terrified of going to the basement to do laundry by myself. But you get to overcome your fears along with the characters, as you learn to accept them for what they are - just empty fears
- Writing was great. I got to remember what it feels like to be a kid again. I actually related to the characters.
- The major and minor villains are so convincingly hateful (for good reasons) that you just want to reach out into the book and slap them. That goes for Tom, Henry, Butch and Eddie's mother.

A group of teenagers stumbles upon an evil force that will eventually draw them all back to Derry, Maine, for a final showdown. Reissue.

Cheri Fuller

It took a very long time but I finally finished the audio book version of It. I did enjoy it quite a lot but there were some places when it just felt overly long. But, for a book of this size, I imagine it would have to at some point. 

I'm still not afraid of clowns!

Susan 

I honestly enjoyed the book. While at times it felt like work due to his descriptions, I powered through and kept reading. It wasn't really until the end that I felt I couldn't put It down. Once again, I enjoyed the book and almost gave it a five star but I simply couldn't give that extra star. The reasons as followed:

1. The language. Now I realize this was written in a different time period so maybe the language was used more often then. This is something I can move past.

2. Some of the descriptions made me feel like it was way to descriptive. Once away, something I can move past as I know Stephen King is known for this.

3. The sexual scene between CHILDREN was really not needed in my opinion. I honestly feel there could have been another way for the scene to have worked out or even have cut it out completely. When it was hinted this was coming up, I instantly went into the previous reviews and confirmed this was truly a scene written in the book. I would like to think I have an average reading speed but I read a lot faster than I normally do for this scene. I made sure there was nothing too important for the story and moved on as fast as I could. I don't want to mark this review as a spoiler as nothing too major is given away and wanted to warn people that there is a scene they may not be comfortable reading.

Sade A

BOOYAH!!! Took me a shit load of years but i finally got through this book..RTC :)

Cracks Knuckles* It's Time
First off, i am so absolutely glad that this wasn't the first Stephen King novel i picked up. If it had, i'm almost certain i wouldn't have gone close to any of his books again except on a dare. Oh don't get me wrong, the story itself when King decides to actually write the story and stop filling the pages with frankly shit load of unnessary stuff is brilliant.( There's something about Kids fighting monsters that Adults can't see that will always be brilliant.) 

The problem with this book? King's inability to Keep It Simple, his ambigous explanation for everything that happened really!! I mean the turtle, going into the deadlights, the other being that we don't know about but has been there before IT and the turtle? everytime Bill said"he thrusts his fist against the post and still insists he sees ghosts", everytime you'd read a line and there'd be another thought in italics under and you're wondering who? what? do they have split personalities?Am i reading two stories??? WTF dude!! Sigh*
Don't get me wrong it's not like exciting things didn't happen, but for the most part you get an exciting part, the story starts happpening and then for some weird reason you start getting some existential kind of reasoning going along with the plot:
Bill: What are you
Turtle: I am the turtle son. I made the universe but please don't blame me for it; I had a bellyache
Me: TF???
Bill: Help me! Please help me
Turtle: I take no stand in these matters
Me: seriously WTF???
Bill: My brother
Turtle: has his own place in the macroverse; energy is eternal, as even a child such as yourself must understand
Bill thinking: and Bill understood somehow that there was yet Another, and that Final Other dwelt in a void beyond this one. The Final Other was perhaps the creator of the Turtle, which only watched and IT which only ate. This Other was a force beyond the universe, a power beyond all other power, the author of all there was
Me: (having bible flash backs now)


And this is the ultimate problem i have with authors that create these sort of monsters, they can't explain it.. There's just some weak ass type of attempt to try and satisfy the reader's curiousity for why.

The end of the book was bittersweet though..
p.s: so since the movie is coming out in September this year, i've been speculating on parts that have a high probability of not making it into the movies. so far i've got two: 
1. Every time Henry or his father and every other character but especially those two say nigger.
2. (view spoiler)[Beverley sleeping with all the boys in the Losers club ( i never did understand why they had to have sex to do away with their fear, although now that i think about it, all of them had gone through and defeated some sort of fear and Bev's had been sex i guess, but why then?)  (hide spoiler)]

It: Chapter Two—now a major motion picture! Stephen King’s terrifying, classic #1 New York Times bestseller, “a landmark in American literature” (Chicago Sun-Times)—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It. Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers. Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It. “Stephen King’s most mature work” (St. Petersburg Times), “It will overwhelm you…to be read in a well-lit room only” (Los Angeles Times).

Shareca

IT
Stephen King
★★★★★

🦨 1184 pgs; ab: 45 hours
🤡 horror; thriller
🚥 racism; homophobia; death [of a parent + children]; sexual situations w minors; murder; trauma; ptsd; blood 🔪

IT, because of both its length and scope, is virtually impossible to cover everything, let alone ✨even✨ fifty percent. Despite it, though, I am pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen King's IT.

It took me a few months, but I ✨finally✨ finished! 🤡

King's prose is poetically beautiful and so easy to digest and read that you can easily lose yourself in several pages; his blend of past and present and the interwoven POVs are exemplary, as well as the abrupt chapter conclusions. [Most of them end on an uncompleted line/thought.]

One of the most exciting aspects of the novel is the character development, as there is so much that can be explored between the past and the present and how these friends have forgotten and remembered a past event that they are only able to recall. The development of each character and how they relate to one another, as well as Pennywise's lore, is nothing short of admirable. 🥹😭

At the end of IT, I was satisfied in that I had a complete understanding of the backstories of each Loser, as well as many of the characters surrounding them, such as Bowers.

When it comes to renowned fiction, IT is among the many novels I am grateful to have read; it is an incredible experience from beginning to end. While reading, in the moment, can be overwhelming, it may feel best to take it leisurely. If you have the opportunity, I would suggest reading this at your own pace with little to no pressure.

An incredible novel; Pennywise is terrifying, as are our worst fears. 👏🏾🥰

*The orgy scene is always a subject of controversy when discussing IT, and, as a whole, I thought it worked well with Bev's theme and demonstrated the trauma she faced from her father and the other male influences in her life. I thought this addition was fascinating and engaging.*

lily

my favorite book of all time… cannot put my love for this book into words. most people are intimidated by the length of this book, at 1100+ pages, but i could easily read this material doubled in length. 

the theme of childhood and the magic that remains in childhood sticks with me so hard, and the amount of character built into the main cast makes it so easy to get attached very very quickly. i’ve read this book 4 times now and i will of course read it again and again, i find more and more with each read that i missed the previous time. 

enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone, as long as you’re alright with horror/gore!! this book is a huge part of me and i am deeply grateful for its existence

Arturo Hernández

There’s something about the depth of each of the characters this book presents through its +1500 pages. It takes you to a part of your life where you normally don’t go very often. It’s exciting, it’s crazy, it’s classic.

Lorenzo Barretta

Katarina Cestic

Too many unnecessary parts
Some povs were so boring and unnecessary that you could skip them and you wouldn't miss anything of the important storyline :)

Tilde C

There's no doubt It is a book simply bursting with an author's creativity and joy of storytelling. King's use of countless point of view characters and distinct voices and techniques for conveying different emotional states in this brick of a book shows how he's earned his success as a horror novelist. I particularly like how he conveys his characters' semi-subconscious thoughts through abrupt parenthesized sentences lacking other punctuation.

But on the other hand, I do seriously question if this book truly needed to be 1000+ pages. Admittedly he's trying to convey some nicely complex horror ideas (like how the town -- and particularly the adult population -- of Derry is complicit and willfully ignorant of the horrors taking place there -- something I've never seen successfully represented in an adaptation), but there were chapters I definitely wondered why an editor hadn't descended on them with a harsher pen. 

My main criticism of It, though, was the writing concerning the character of Beverly. At first I thought her portrayal was as well-rounded as the other characters, but I felt a slowly increasing bad taste in my mouth from the way this book wrote about the body and mind of an eleven year old girl. Understand that I'm not playing decency police, but it was tiring seeing the difference in word use and voice between all the charming idiosyncrasies and personalities among the boys, and then Beverly would enter a scene and we'd be constantly reminded of her budding breasts and hairless skin, even when she was alone. (I was forewarned about the child orgy scene, I've even read King's rationalization for it, so I wasn't so much shocked as I was just cringing at how Beverly's perspective was written).

The horror is gruesome and complex and the emotional parts felt grounded and well written, but I can't see myself recommending this to friends just due to the way Bev is handled.

Nadia Serrano

WAAAYY better than the movie. Sone parts seemed unnecessary but overall love the character and the story line. Truly terrifying!

jess

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Where do I even begin with this book? To say I have very mixed feelings is understating it. There's a lot of things I love about this book and would give a full five stars, and a lot of things I hate about this book that would earn any other book one star. I've compromised for three stars, but that really doesn't cover my feelings on this book. It is a horror epic that somehow manages to illuminate friendship and childhood while also exploring the hateful parts of humanity. Does it work? I'm honestly not sure.

A caveat: my perspective on IT is absolutely colored by spending time in queer fandom spaces, reading fanfiction, and movie canon. I don't think that perspective can be discarded in this review. For some reason, a ton of queer people (me included) connect with this book that is by today's standards, homophobic. There are queer implications in the movie, but it comes out of the queer subtext in the book that I am 80% sure Stephen King never even realized. I ended up drafting an entire post about this topic after it overflowed this already hefty review, so, um, stay tuned?



One thing I can say with conviction is that I love every single character in the Loser's Club. They really worm their way into your heart. I am, unabashedly, an Eddie Kaspbrak lo(s)ver first and foremost, but all of the characters have their own charm to them. And they're all, to Derry, losers. There's the leader, Bill Denbrough, a stutterer who lost his brother; Stanley Uris, a Jewish boy with an ambiguous disorder; Eddie Kaspbrak, an asthmatic boy with an overprotective mother; Richie Tozier, affectionately called Trashmouth because he can't keep his mouth shut; Mike Hanlon, a black boy who lives on the outskirts of Derry; Ben Hanscom, an overweight boy who loves books; and Beverly Marsh, the only girl of the group. In adulthood, they are a famous author, a successful accountant, a limo company owner, a famous DJ, a librarian, a successful architect, and a fashion designer--the Losers, in other words, aren't losing.

All of the characters are so real. One of Stephen King's writing strengths is that he spends so long developing the characters that you really get to know them inside and out. He literally spends one hundred pages at the beginning of the book, where Mike calls each of the Losers in turn to bring them back to Derry, exploring their lives as adults and laying out the trauma and ghosts that have haunted them since childhood and setting them up for the lengthy section of the Losers as children that come after. Later, there's a flashback section of each of them recounting their memories from that summer. The Losers are, without question, the biggest strength of the book, both individually and together. 

The group is absolutely delightful both as children and as adults. They love each other so much and it just brings me so much joy. There's great banter between them; they tease each other a lot but it's clear that all of them actually care so much about each other because they're all they have. (Cue me absolutely Losing It whenever one of the group says they'd die for another.) There are so many great dynamics between the whole group as well as various members of the Loser's Club: some of my favourites are Richie and Eddie ("cute cute cute!"), Beverly and Richie (he teaches her how to sleep a yo-yo), Bill and Eddie (I don't have the space in this review to dismantle this one), and Mike and Bill (this one too). I definitely would not have had the patience for this book if I wasn't absolutely head over heels in love with the characters. And I think Stephen King tried to make the group an ode to the Losers of the world. For 1986, I think it's successful in doing so.

Childhood and innocence is such a intense, hard-hitting theme in this book, drawing on nostalgia and the conventions of a bildungsroman novel. I've said that the IT films somehow manage to be one of the most surprisingly heartrending coming-of-age films, and it's because the book is. So much of the book mixes up childhood and adulthood and the liminal space between, and it captures the joy and innocence of childhood so well and the profound sense of loss that comes with Growing Up, and sometimes, learning how to be a kid again.
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself -- that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller ... And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once ... The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you.
Stephen King's writing is so vivid and descriptive that it's too vivid and descriptive at times. This book is just too damn long. I skimmed most of the Derry interludes. The essential one to understanding the characters is the second one, where Mike's father was involved with it; the rest are It's attacks that adds lore to Derry but not much else. The Losers don't meet up as adults until five hundred pages into the book. If a character is having thoughts, you will get a long string of thoughts, and sometimes in response another character's long string of thoughts. Stephen King will describe everything in too much detail. He'll describe water running over balls and nipples hardening in emotion, which drove me absolutely nuts every time without fail.

I did like Stephen King's constant cutting-in of parentheses, though. He does have a very stream-of-consciousness writing style, with very close third person that I generally tend to enjoy. This is my first King book, so I don't know if it's common in his writing or not.

By today's standards, this book is ... immensely problematic, and that's not even counting That One Infamous Scene at the end of the book. I'd wager there is, on average, at least one homophobic or racist slur per page, if not more, as well as casual racism and homophobia from the main characters. There are two extremely violent hate crimes, one against a gay couple, and one against the Black community in Derry; both written to shock readers. It's portrayed as It poisoning the minds of those in Derry and indirectly causing these horrific hate crimes, but it takes from very real events and is definitely far more disturbing than the more supernatural horror in the book. There's also other hate crimes throughout the entire book. Also, Stephen King absolutely can't write women and Beverly, as an eleven-year-old girl and as an adult, is constantly sexualized in the narrative and it honestly made me sick. In a lot of ways, it's a product of its time; some of the content is meant to horrify readers, some is due to the historical background of the 1950s and 1980s, and some is just Stephen King being iffy.

And this may be a possible spoiler, but It Chapter Two was right. The ending sucked. It had me sobbing uncontrollably on public transit, but it sucked. I literally went straight from closing the book to opening AO3 to look for fix-it fic. On a deeper note, it felt unfulfilling and painful, like there was no payoff for reading a book centered around the friendship of these seven losers. It's a solid, if drawn-out plot, but the ending was a punch to the gut and not really in a good way. It may be blasphemy to say this, but I genuinely think that the films did a lot better in concluding the stories of both the child and the adult Losers.

So: is It a good book? There's a lot of good in it. There's also a lot of bad. For superfans of the film, I definitely think the book is worth reading for the lore and characters; in addition, those who read a lot of adult fiction or horror will probably be better equipped to deal with the content of this book. I've heard It is essential Stephen King as well. But if you find yourself far more interested in the coming-of-age and character relationships than the horror and gory details, it might be better to stick with the movie (and fanfiction, I will hook y'all up with some faves). The one thing I can say for certain: It is unlike anything I've ever read before.

content warnings | homophobia (slurs, graphic & violent hate crimes), racism (slurs, graphic & violent hate crimes), domestic abuse, child abuse, implied CSA, graphic group sex between underage characters, suicide, violence, character death, casual misogyny, Stephen King Not Kowing How To Write Women

this review is so long and you know what?? [kid from the jade of the orient scene voice] the fun's just beginning