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Three stars for this monstrous book which could easily be used as a murder weapon because of its enormous length. You may rub your eyes now and ask why the hell I gave this well-known and popular Stephen King classic with four- and five-star ratings everywhere only three stars, and you’d be completely correct to do so. Don’t rely on my rating, please (and even less on my review, as it consists mostly on piling up my random thoughts).
A lot of people love this book more than I did, and while I appreciated a lot of its contents, they are doing so in a way which is completely justified. I could have loved it myself, if only there hadn’t been so many things which annoyed me. But first, let me explain why this book was even closer to two than four stars.

In my past, I have never been scared by horror movies or books, and the reason for this is that I never watched horror movies and never read horror books. For me, clowns were just clowns, there was nothing that could have connected them to IT. I hadn’t even heard of most Stephen King novels until one or two years ago, and even until then, Pet Sematary was the only one I had at least some knowledge about. Last summer, I finally decided to give a Stephen King book a try, and it was Under the Dome which made me fall in love with his writing, his plots, his storylines, his characters. Carrie followed, and Different Seasons and Salem’s Lot and The Shining and The Dead Zone, and all of them were more or less good books. IT is even better, I can assure you. But liking all those books I have already read by Mr. King, the bar has been set high, and IT wasn’t able to compete with the other ones for me.

There are three things Stephen King has done to me with this book:
1. I shiver whenever I hear the verb to float. This verb sounds horrifying to me after reading this novel, and I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way.
2. In my childhood, I have always been afraid that one day I would turn on the shower and drops of blood would run out of it instead of water. Thank you, Mr. King, for bringing that fear back to me.
3. The biggest fear this book has plagued me with is not the fear of clowns, as it was the case with most readers of this. Nope, the biggest fear I have after reading this is the fear of reading more equally long King books.

Out of the things which bothered me, the length was one of the most annoying parts. I don’t have anything against long books; in fact, I have never given a book with more than 800 pages less than three stars. But there is always an exception to the rule.
If someone had asked me after the first 400 pages, this book would have received completely justified five stars. The premise was stunning, the characters were interesting, the twists shocking.
If someone had asked me after the next 400 pages, this book would have received four stars, because even with all the awesomeness, it was still an exceptionally good book with a lot of intriguing moments.
The third part of the story would have received a highly disappointed one star. There was too much unnecessary rambling going on, so much that something happened to me which I had never experienced before: I fell out of love with a book I had already fallen in love with during the first half.
The last part of IT became better again, worthy of three stars, it offered decent conclusions and a lot of action, but it was too late for me to enjoy it anymore.
And if you ask me now, 1400 pages after turning the first page of this book (and two months later, because that was how long I needed to get through this), what I do appreciate is the character development, the wonderful subject of friendship which has been explored in an enthralling way, and the fact that this book focuses on so many different plotlines and subjects still stuns me.

The beginning made me want this book to go on forever. The story, which everyone of you should be familiar with in case you haven’t been living under a rock for years, was so intriguing that it was impossible to put this book down. I read the first 700 pages in the course of five days. For the last 700 pages, I needed more than fifty days. And here’s why:

The characters always belong to King’s most successful accomplishments. Whenever I have opened a King book until now, I found some characters to root for and to be interested in (let’s ignore those huge disappointments called Rage and Firestarter). It is the same with his book. Here is who we have:
�� Ben Hanscom or The Guy Who Was Too Fat To Have Friends. Ben was my favorite character of this novel; he had some great layers. His scenes in the library were some of the most outstanding parts of the novel. And yet Stephen King managed to make him appear as a minor character, because for most parts of the novel, he was just there, and that was already all to him, unfortunately.
�� Bill Denbrough or The Stuttering Leader Of The Group. What bothered me was that throughout the entire novel, I had the feeling that King wanted to depict Bill as close as possible to himself, and while I cannot judge the character connections between the two of them, Bill never became a character I was able to connect to.
�� Richie Tozier or The Guy Who Creates Those Voices Nobody Understands. One of the most annoying characters I have ever had to encounter in any novel. It seemed impossible to understand what the intention of creating this character was apart from adding a seventh character to the Losers' Club.
�� Eddie Kaspbrak or The Guy With The Asthma. Seriously, his problems with his Asthma were the only aspects characterizing him. For most parts of the novel, Eddie appeared to be a caricature of someone not even Stephen King knew. It was only as the ending drew close that Eddie's character was allowed some depth, and by then, after 1200 pages it was already too late to care for him anymore.
�� Stan Uris or The Guy Who Was Just There. Was there ever anything important about Stan? I am surprised I even remember his name. A less one-dimensional character is definitely difficult to encounter.
�� Beverly Marsh or The Only Girl In The Group. Definitely one of the three more interesting characters next to Bill and Ben, yet after more than 1000 pages spent with her character, I am still asking myself who exactly Beverly was, because it was mostly her surroundings defining her rather than her own character. As she was the one I cared for most during the course of the novel, this can be forgiven, though.
�� Mike Hanlon or The Guy Who Only Appeared After Half Of The Book Was Over. Mike was definitely an interesting character, considering his foreign background and his intelligence. Too bad he didn’t appear for half of the book, and then it felt like his connection to the other kids was completely forced out of nowhere.


Most of those characters would have been boring to read about on their own, but it was their friendship which became the major strength of the novel. Thinking about it now after having finished it, I don't consider IT to be a horror novel, it is a novel about friendship for me. Sadly, whenever those friends weren't together, I caught myself losing my patience with this huge book.

Lastly, we also had Henry Bowers or The Guy Who Was Too Dumb To Think About Anything. The second antagonist next to the well-known Pennywise, and maybe the caricature of all caricatures. It is so easy to explain the behavior of bad people by their abusive parents, and Stephen King seems to have created this character thinking, „Why should I waste time to develop Henry into a multi-faceted character? Let’s just write him as onedimensional, stupid and evil through and through. Why should a character like him be given more than the brain of a grass stalk? It is enough if Henry can think far enough to find his single destination in beating the shit out of everyone.��


In addition, two other aspects weakened my reading experience, and without those two points I might even have rated it with four stars. First of all, Stephen King loves infodumping. I don't. The interludes were interesting in their contents, but pure torture to read. A book shouldn't switch between fictional storytelling and fictional history accounts. Secondly, (view spoiler)[this book included one important sex scene, one which was completely senseless, didn't add anything to the story and only disgusted and deterred me more than Pennywise was ever able to in this book. I can deal with repugnant scenes, as long as they can be logically explained, feel as if they developed naturally out of the story and add some layers to the plot. Nothing of those three aspects was the case here. The scene can be read in a symbolic way as the end of their childish innocence, and for Beverly as her reclaiming her power over her own character. However, King explained it as if the children had to be brought together to defeat IT, and can someone please enlighten me why this had to be done in the form a gang bang between 12-year-olds? (hide spoiler)]


It is enthralling that Stephen King was even able to write a book with so many pages which ended up being loved and hated by millions of people. IT - or Pennywise, depending on which name you prefer - has caused a lot of readers to be harassed by nightmares, and Tim Curry's portrayal of Pennywise will forever be connected with one of the modern horror novels (and movies). This book is good, there is no doubt about that. However, it is necessary to prepare for the length and never be unnerved by it, because that is part of why I had to struggle my way through the second half.

Recommended if you have a lot of time on your hands, but I don't think it would be wise to go into this without being familiar with King's writing style.


Pre-reading review: (16th March 2016)

It probably belongs to those books most fans of the horror genre and Stephen King's writing in particular are in desperate need to read. Who has not heard of the clown scaring innocent kids to death? And even if indeed, by some surprising kind of living-under-a-rock (which I am usually the expert for) you did miss the story of "It", then you probably know this creature which made many people feel scared to enter their cellar alone by night:



I have never been particularly scared by clowns, so let's see if this book might change my opinion. At the moment, the only thing I am scared of is the length. 1,376 pages? Seriously, Mr. King?