It

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Summary: One of Stephen King's best books
Review: I have to say, that when Stephen King wrote this book he truly outdid himself. Stephen King enters you into the world of seven children that are bonded by destiny to fight evil itself in the form of a clown that haunts them and kills other children. After they thought they had killed IT, 20 something years later, IT comes back and they are drawn back to their hometown to face the same evil they faced as children but now they are adults and actually don't have their innocence and imagination, which were their advantages over IT. You'll be hooked until the end until one of the forces wins, IT or the force that draws the children (now adults) toghether.

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Summary: SK does it again
Review: Justwhen your heart rate is back to normal SK unleashes his scariest book ever. I am now more afraid of clowns than sharks. This book will do to a circus what Jaws did to beach parties

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Summary: An interesting take on what growing up means
Review: The first time I read "It," I was maybe 16, and was scared silly by the idea of a monster that feeds on our fears. I was then, and am now, amazed at how much King made me care about his characters, and how fleshed out they were. Then I grew up. Got an education, got married, had kids. Having children was for me, at age 27, a wake-up call to my own mortality, and that our lives are precious and short, and sadly non-magical.

A belief in (metaphorical or real) Magic, like that Our Players use and are manipulated by, is in awfully short supply as we grow older, and the characters struggle to recapture their belief in Magic (Why do you think Harry Potter is so popular amongst adults anyway?).

When I finished the book at age 16, I was relieved that the heroes had whupped It and set things right. At 27, I was struck by a sense of loss, both vicarious and personal. What effect does forgetting our childhood (as many of us do) have on adulthood? King's apparent thesis is that it makes being an adult no damned fun - we become constricted with the obligations of adulthood and lose our sense of wonder and longing, and forget how to dream.

While King challenges us to remember the beauty of childhood, there is a caution as well, as the main characters struggle to conquer the demons of childhood. In a literal sense, It pulls them back for a confrontation with Itself, as well as the evil personage of Henry Bowers. Metaphorically, they must face the scars of their own childhoods which continue to plague them; abuse, emotional coldness, death of a brother, being The Fat Kid, being a hypochondriac weakling, being a target of bigotry - in short, being different. Their success comes at a high price, though.

My only real criticisms of this book are the fact that it is bloody long, and although the adolescent sex scene didn't really offend me, it did confuse me - I'm still not entirely sure of its function in the book, besides as a bookend to Bill and Beverly's shagging. Maybe it's a way of pointing out that when the Magic leaves, all we have left are Love and Desire, and we'd better hold on to those for all we're worth. As adults, it certainly seems that those two things are often all we do have.

Also, I was disappointed that in the end, the characters begin to forget again - it seems to defy King's admonition to remember the magic of childhood. The ending was not entirely satisfactory, but you can't have everything. In Real Life, endings are rarely totally satisfactory, and fiction is not required to differ in that regard.

All told, this is an interesting, emotional, absorbing read, and certainly King's magnum opus. I highly recommend that younger readers (like under 22 or so) wait 6 or 8 years before reading the book again, until they've seen a bit more of life. Doing so will certainly change your perspective on "It".

Rating:
Summary: Muy bueno
Review: As a horror novel "It" works well, to my mind, even better than "The Shining". Not that I was much scared. I was more touched by a deep sense of childhood, friendship, and the loss of innocense, which are the most important themes in the novel. "It" comprises all our chidhood fears, but most of all the fear of becoming an adult...

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Summary: "It was a promise he had kept until today."
Review: Arguably the most accomplished novel by pop lit god Stephen King, "IT" maintains a chokehold on the reader; both frightening and gripping, it's brilliantly paced and a wonderful read.

Derry, Maine is the smalltown setting for this and several other King shockers; indeed, King seems hellbent on rooting out the evil under the surface of rural America, and he manages to write distinctively American tales in the process. The indeterminate nature of the terror that hides in Derry is crucial to this book's themes of childhood fears and trauma, as is its avatar, Pennywise the clown. While The Stand told a story grander in breadth and setting, "IT" spans a longer period of time, while staying close to the main characters and giving the reader a real sense of them as people. The story itself is brilliantly structured and strings the reader along as only King can manage; the four protagonists encounter IT as children, and then again as adults, and King runs the narratives parallel to one another, heightening the tension and the sense of foreboding.

This is interspersed with bits of the history of Derry, giving the reader a little more insight into the evil in the town, and in the townspeople. The modest scale of the epic story makes the sacrifices at the end all the more bittersweet, and the characters worth revisiting.

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Summary: Freaky and Scary!
Review: This is an excellent spooky book, until you get to the end where it gets utterly ridiculous. Anyway, a group of teenage friends battle an evil force in their home town, and they vow to return if the evil force comes back. This evil force appears in the form of a creepy clown that will scare the bejeepers out of you!

Well, guess what? The evil force comes back! All of the friends (now middle aged) are summoned together to fight the force again. This time they must find the core and kill it so it will never return.

I was enjoying the friends and even the creepy clown. But what happens in the end (I don't want to spoil it for you) is a bit of a let down. It's like King just up and went off in a totally new direction.

All in all, though, it was a typical Stephen King hair-raising, page gripper. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Very Very Good Book
Review: This book is, simply put, awesome. Although it takes a little while (okay, okay - a long while, like 500 pages) to get into, the rest of it is totally worth it. & even though the first part you're not all the way into it there are still enough exciting scenes & suspense to be good. I finished the book last night & it is just amazing. It all kind of ties together & there are keys to understand the rest of it (Eddie's aspirator). It is more than worth the money spent on it & the time it takes to read it (it took me a little less than three months).

THE VERDICT: Go out and buy it now!!

Rating:
Summary: How Strange Things Can Make A Good Book
Review: Stephen King's It is about seven kids battling an evil monster in Maine during 1958. Years later, they come back as adults, unsure of whether they killed It. All the characters have their own experiences with the monster, which helps you understand their personalities more thoroughly. The book builds up tension for the apocalyptic ending with details. Some of these seemed boring and unnecessary, but most kept the plot line interesting. This was probably due to the oddness of the side stories, such as a plastic statue of Paul Bunyan attacking one kid and another kid sitting in a torture chair at the police station.
One thing I particularly enjoyed about the book was the five interludes. Each tells a part of Derry's history having to do with It. They give you background information which helps explain why certain things happen. An example of this is how It blew up a factory called Kitchener Ironworks and later a character named Mike met It for the first time in the building's ruins.
I enjoyed It because it was an interesting, detailed book. It's also a very different book. There aren't many novels out there that are about a childhood nightmare coming true.


Rating:
Summary: One of the best books written by Stephen King
Review: IT is the pinnicle of Stephen King's fame. By far, it is his largest book, which is a put-down at first, but it is worth it.

I read a couple Stephen King books before this, like Dreamcatcher (which does have an IT reference I didn't get when I first read it) and Carrie, but IT made me a huge fan. The characters jump off the page, and so does the monster that terrorizes them. The seven main characters are well-drawn out and you grow to love them. You can feel with them, and that is a big part of what makes this book so good. If any of the characters weren't detailed the way they are, IT wouldn't be very good.

There are intricate little details I that I first skipped over when reading it (because, hey, it's a REALLY long book, and I wanted to get to the end), like the middle sections when Mike introduces us to happenings long before the book takes place, but it's fun to read back on it later and see how it ties in with the story.

Yes, it is a whopping 1,038 pages. But once you get past the length, it is a rockin' good book. I've read a lot of Steven King books, but whenever I read IT, I'm always drawn back into Derry, where you've got to be sure you step around the sewer holes instead of over them. It deals with some mature subjects (being pretty much curse words, violence, and 3 sex scenes) so I would say you wouldn't want to give this to anyone under the age of 16.

Overall, this is a worthwhile book to have and read over and over. I read it when I was a high-school sophmore, and I still read it. That's gotta count for something, right?

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Summary: "It" is a landmark! A Great Book!
Review: Sure, its size is intimidating, but this book is absolutley fabulous! It found it among one of the greatest books I have ever read. I was afraid of clowns at first, but gradually, I got over that fear when I encountered Pennywise in this book. The "horror" is not so much the clown himself, but that fact that he is everyone's worst nightmare!

Reading "IT" can be boring at times, and the chapters are broken up into several "mini-segments." But it isn't too bad. The characters are so real and believeable, it's like reading about yourself! I recommend this book to anyone (over the age of 13). It can be a little scary, especially when read at night...oooo!