It

Rating:
Summary: Everything you want in a Stephen King book
Review: Simply said it's his best. The seven characters who confront 'IT' both as children and again as adults become your friends by the time you finish.

The book is 100 times better than the movie. The movie was terrible and left out 75% of the story and events. Read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Where to begin....
Review: There's a lot to this book. One would think that would be obvious, simply based on the sheer size of the thing, but the fact of the matter is that this story also covers a remarkable span of theme and quality in its groping quest for...well, something, because this is certainly different from much of what King wrote around the time this was published.

To start, the good, and there is plenty of it. The novel itself tells a story that manages to be compelling and suspenseful (as suspenseful as a forum where you manage the pace yourself can be, I suppose) throughout, which is probably good enough for most die-hard readers of King. The characters themselves are fairly endearing, though they're certainly more than a little two-dimensional at times. On the whole, the book would be fairly average, however, were it not for the occasional flashes of brilliance that King shows in his writing. One you may want to look out for is Mike's father's description of the burning of the Black Spot, but most of the historical interludes manage to find a special level of storytelling that set them apart from the rest and achieve the degree of quality that shows up in King's later, better work (Heats in Atlantis, Desperation, etc.).

The book isn't all warm fuzzies, however--there are some serious problems that some readers may have with this novel. First off, though I hate to say it, the length is a problem. This is basically two books in one, since King sets out to tell completely two complete cycles of conflict between the children and Pennywise, and when you add that to King's general tendency to bloat a little, you've got a massive piece of work. What's more, the organization will probably throw some people--I hate having to pay attention to datelines to know what timeframe I'm in. Fortunately, this isn't as big a problem as it could be, and I managed to keep up perfectly well, but it still may be a concern for some people.

Now, I'm not easy to offend, but even I have to admit that he went out on a few limbs when he wrote this book for no apparent reason. There are some undertones that some would label misogynistic, and one particularly distressing scene near the end concerning Beverly and the rest of the group. I certainly wouldn't recommend that just any teenager be allowed to read the novel, and any overly sensitive adults might want to reconsider before they give it a shot as well. Additionally, the characters are sometimes so defined by their various outcast traits that they strain the bounds of believability, which may keep those approaching the book from a skeptic's perspective from fully enjoying the experience.

Overall, however, you have to consider what audience is likely to read this book in the first place. There are some King books that I would recommend to anybody. This is not one of them. If you've read other work by Stephen King that you like, you'll probably find this book right up your alley, and if you're in the market for a good old fashioned horror read, you won't be disappointed. Ultimately, though, the novel's riskier moves probably serve to alienate any readers outside of King's usual "fan base," so if you're looking for a first book by Steve, I'd point you towards Desperation or Hearts and Atlantis before trying to tackle It.

Rating:
Summary: His Best Ever
Review: "The King of Horror" produced his finest tale when he wrote IT. Impressively long at 1000+ pages, King takes his readers on a thrilling joyride back to the wonders and terrors of childhood. Like no other living author, King remembers what childhood consisted of and has the uncanny ability to recall it for us in all its intensity of conflicting emotions.
The plot of this novel is straightforward. Set in 1958, 7 children must face down an almost supernatural evil which they come to call IT. Able to take on the aspect of each person's worst fear, IT mostly sleeps only to awake every 26 or 27 years to feed on the children of Derry. After a series of adventures, the children battle IT to a draw. 27 years later, as adults, they are recalled to Derry to once again do battle with IT's ancient evil.
King interweaves the events of the present day with those of 1958. His characters ring completely true, although they are more vibrant as children than as adults. The various subplots and adventures experienced by the children (the apocalyptic rockfight, dam-building, movie-going, Silver, to name a few) enhance the verisimilitude of the story.
I must caution you on two things. 1st, there is a sex scene late in the book that many will find offensive. While integral to the plot, King could have developed a less viscerally offensive avenue for his characters' escape. It is King in his "if I can't get terror, I'll take horror, and if I can't get that I'll go for the gross-out" mode. 2nd, I am one who equates the name of Stephen King with the term "finest living author". His work, while at times crude, even gross, has the depth and vibrancy of the best of Dickens. No stylist he, but a storyteller without peer with an uncanny ability to delineate character with a few sentences. This is his finest work. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: Welcome to a new familiar world!
Review: Welcome to a new familiar world. Derry, Maine could be a nice little town like any small town U.S.A. , but filtered through the mind of Stephen King, it becomes the likeness of pure Hell. Mr. Kings mind is a womb which gestates pure evil.
Coming up for the plot of this story would be a magnificient feat in itself, but the way it is scripted is pure poetry in prose.
To sum up the plot without giving away the details, I will tell you this: Seven kids discover an evil in their hometown of Derry, Maine and decide to do something about it. Twenty-seven years later they are called back to do battle once again. That is the plot in two basic sentences. You may ask why there are 1,000+ pages in this book. It is the way the story is told. Stephen King brings back every touch, every sight, every smell of a child that you would swear you were there. Most important, he brings back every fear of a child. If you were afraid of it when you were a kid, chances are, you will read about it in this book. As an added bonus; I can almost guarantee that you will have that same lumpy feeling in your throat, and that same burning feeling in your guts as you read this. Simply put: Mr. King takes you for a ride on the freeway of terror, and all along the way you don't want to get off, but you make sure you know where the exit ramps are located.
If you remember walking home after dark as a kid, and that feeling of being watched quickens your pace to a dead sprint: READ THIS BOOK. If you remember leaving your closet lights on at night to thwart any would-be monstorous attackers: READ THIS BOOK. Most importantly: If you were or are that person who is afraid to walk over storm drains in the street: READ THIS BOOK (with the closet lights on)!!!!!!!!
So read this book, and welcome to a new familiar world, you will get the hell out if you know whats good for you.
P.S. My only complaint is this: I just bought and read this book. The only available editions I could find were the new paperback editions with the picture of the clown skull on the cover. The publisher redid all of Stephen King's covers for the paperback editions. Let me tell you that as a person who enjoys the "total package " of a book, I find these covers cheesy and very degrading to the story contained within. If you are like me, I suggest that you find a hardcover edition on-line with an origional cover, as I plan to do the same.

Rating:
Summary: An Epic, Lovecraftian Masterpiece!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: DON'T BELIEVE WHAT ANYONE SAYS ABOUT THE "BAD" ENDING!!!!!!

If you're like me, you read the bad reviews first. Well, first and foremost, let me warn you against that practice with this book, for the sole reason that most of the bad reviews spoil the ending. More on that in a moment.

However, if you must know what people don't like about this book, here are the only three complaints: 1. The ending is "stupid". More on that in a moment. 2. It's too obscene. Near the "stupid" ending, there is a scene that offended ME (which is pretty hard unless you know what buttons to push) concerning very perverted sexuality. It's very short, and actually doesn't fit in with the rest of the book, so don't let that throw you off. And 3. It's too long. That's true. The book is over 1000 pages long, but that's actually a good thing in this case. It's very detailed to epic proportions. Give yourself a summer for this one. It's worth (almost) every page. There you have it. The bad reasons. No need to read the bad reviews and have the book spoiled.

Now for the ending. I called this book "lovecraftian" because it's in the grand tradition of the great horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft. Anyone who has read his work, which I STRONGLY advise, will know just how excellent the ending really is. Don't be thrown off by unimaginative philistines who take everything at face value. Just read the short story "Call of Cthulhu" by Lovecraft, and you'll be ready for this book's ending.

IT is one of the most imaginative, and detailed of Stephen King's work. The Shining, The Stand, and The Dark Tower are the only things above it. The direct simplicity of his prose makes me want to write myself. He isn't Joyce, he isn't Dickens, and he isn't Lovecraft either, but he's close. He's a writer for the masses, and he writes what the masses want, and he does it beautifully. Don't expect any life-lessons here, just a movie with pages. An excellent book. A bit slow to start, but stick with it.

Oh, and DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!!! It's hideous garbage.

Rating:
Summary: A Veritable Reading Marathon
Review: For me, a good book is one whereby the story grips me from the start and doesn't let go. In IT, from the very first page describing the death of George Denbrough's brother to the fast-paced (but a little weak) ending, this book grips you. Some people complain about the levels of sex, gore, violence, etc. (a warning to the easily offended), but for me it just enhances the reality of the book.
The second great part of this book is the attention to detail (1000+ pages worth), and the myriad of sub-plots ranging from boys lighting their farts on fire to dam building 101. Some say the sub-plots detract from the effectiveness of the book, but in my opinion the sub-plots actually enhance the story and help immerse the reader in Derry, Maine circa 1958
For someone just starting to read Stephen King, I would not recommend this book. Start with a book like Pet Sematary (his best book ever), and get used to his style of writing. Many people are offended by the contents of IT because they haven't read any other books by Stephen King.
A great read. No joke, when I was done I wished it were longer...

Rating:
Summary: just great
Review: although i have a few king books i love pretty much equally - The Shining, It, Pet Sematary, Salem's Lot and The Dead Zone - this one would probably get the title of His Masterpiece (forget The Stand).

this book, like the Tommyknockers, is a bit ungainly - maybe 850 pages would have been better than 1050 - and its time jumps are sometimes a bit hard to follow. other than these small concerns, this book is pretty much flawless. king writes like a man possessed, from the 0-to-60-in-ten-pages beginning to the simple hope and joy of the ending. after setting the story's tone with two of It's attacks, he lets all seven of the characters introduce themselves as adults and then as kids - ben, stuttering bill, mike, eddie, bev, richie and stan are complicated, incredibly well-drawn people, seeming to come alive on the page. for the middle of the book, we are largely in the characters' childhoods; king is excellent at conveying the wonder and overpowering emotions of that age, and these scenes are marginally stronger than the same characters once grown. but that's a small complaint - his dialogue and grasp of understatement is still powerful.

and of course, It itself - aka, Pennywise the Clown, aka Bob Gray - is one of king's very best antagonists. this ancient evil (seeming to hark from the dark dimension that king explores in The Dark Tower) comes as a giant bird, the creature from the black lagoon, a teenage werewolf, an old woman, and of course most famously as a clown resembling Bozo and Ronald McDonald. sure, it sounds hokey - but so did the killer car in Christine. king's lovely but muscular prose style and knack for page-turning suspense keeps us glued to the novel.

there are so many powerful scenes, and classic archetypes explored, that it's pointless to list them. in spite of the book's almost primal story, it's rarely predictable, and still a pain to summarize (watch me try). king knows how to tell a wonderful parallel story, and at the same time leave us with the brooding form of Derry, It's home, whose heart is dark and frightening.

this is certainly not a good king book to start with - i started with Salem's Lot - but is amazing for king fans, and ought to impress even the skeptical. take a look!

Rating:
Summary: King really touches the reader
Review: This is my first Stephen King book I read. This book is full of unforgetable scenes. It will make you laugh, cry, and urinate. Overall it showed me a new perspective toward life. A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE.

Rating:
Summary: Movies never do a book justice.
Review: A long time ago I picked up the book It and got through the first chapter and put it down. It was a bit slow for a nine year old. Several years later, 11 to be exact, I tried it again. This time I didn't put it down until I was finished.

After I read the book I rented the movie and was extremely disappointed. The movie hardly followed the book at all and when it did, it made it a laughing stock. A lot of my peers told me that the movie scared them to death but I don't understand it. The book however was enough to move me.

Disgust, horror, sadness, joy this book made me feel all of them. It starts off a little slow but it moves along at a steady pace after you get to know the characters. Pennywise is one of the few villains which encompasses all that we are scared of and consider malevolent.

The book switches between telling the story of when the characters were children and current day. It shows how they relate their experiences to their past and dredge up forgotten nightmares.

The reason I gave this book only four stars instead of five is because there is a scene which I found overtly obscene and it made me feel nasty just reading it. This may be the point of most occurences in a Stephen King book but this particular scene plays under the pretense of being full of goodness and love. I found it hard to sympathize however.

All in all, this is a great book and it'll make you squirm. If you're already sqeamish, it'll make you scream.

Rating:
Summary: Very Long, But Definitely Worth Reading
Review: Like many of Stephen King's books, "It" takes place in a small town in Maine called Derry. The story begins in 1957 when William "Stuttering Bill" Denbrough's younger brother, George, is killed by a clown in a rain gutter. His death is the first of many that will plague Derry for generations, but it's the one that will haunt Bill forever.

More than twenty-five years later, the pattern is being repeated--children are disappearing and occasionally found dead, brutally murdered--and one concerned citizen (Mike Hanlon) vows to put an end to it. He's responsible for contacting his six childhood friends (Bill Denbrough, Stanley Uris, Richard Tozier, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Beverly Marsh-Rogan) and reminding them of the promise they had made together as children--to destroy IT if it were to reawaken. And it has.

Although the story is set in 1985, all seven friends continuously flashback on their childhood before/while/after confronting IT. The memory segments take up a great deal of the book, but I'm glad they weren't removed. Anyhow, Stephen King and brevity have never gone hand-in-hand.

If you're willing to read 1,000+ pages, then I highly recommend this book. It's well worth your time. But if not, I'd recommend the TV movie instead; that is, if you don't mind watching a three-hour movie. Either way, you'll be spending a considerable amount of time being scared.

My choice was the book. I read "It" back in middle school ('90 or '91), but I wouldn't necessarily encourage younger (or more sensitive) readers to try this one unless you're already familiar with Stephen King or horror novels. There is plenty of gore, profanity, and sex--everything typical of King--that might offend some people. So, consider yourself warned.