Reviews with content warning for Blood - It

This was my first Stephen King and it was so much easier to read and so much more enjoyable than I ever expected. King managed to capture the joys of childhood and friendship in youth in a way that whether you had many friends or none, you felt nostalgic for that time in your life. The alternating timelines were very well done and there way the beats of each timeline were matched and eventually flowed into each other helped the story roll along. And it also gave some weight to the overarching idea of recovering the magic of adolescence and the power of belief. There were about seven pages towards the end I’m pretending don’t exist and your man Mike felt a little forgotten at the end but all in all, a really great read. Perhaps not suitable for those who dislike gore but didn’t turn the stomach too much for fans of the genre.

Content Warnings

witchboyofboston's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Content Warnings

gomezeaa's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

Content Warnings

curtiswastaken's review

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Seems fair that this is King's Opus as it's kind of a pure distillation of King as a writer. All the good and bad are mixed together.

I think IT is maybe one of the worst places to start if you want to get into King, but it's also maybe the ultimate bellwether to know if you're going to love or hate Stephen King books.

If you read all of this book and just love it, 5 stars, no notes, then you probably are going to like anything King has to offer. And I love that for you.

I think this style can be effective sometimes. I think Cujo is a great example where King is able to inject his flavor of world-building that manages to work and elevate the story rather than detract. Christine is the opposite, a mostly fun premise that is routinely soured by obnoxious sidetracking into the past.

What is frustrating about IT is that there is a of stuff that is GREAT. And a lot of what is great about IT is when you're in the dark about what Pennywise is or isn't. The further you go into this book, the more you are told about the history of Derry and 25 different interwoven stories across multiple generations. And the more you learn about Derry and the people within, the less Pennywise feels like a malevolent puppet master and more of a boogeyman.

The inciting event of IT, Georgie encountering Pennywise while chasing his paper boat down the street, is the big motivator for the presumed main character of Bill. But the further you read into IT the impact of that story increasingly dwindles. Bill kind of becomes the least interesting character but as it plays out is ultimately the big hero.

For better or worse, the book should have been about Beverly. And that's probably my biggest gripe with this book, even more so than the fact that about 300-400 pages of this book could disappear and I wouldn't even notice.

Bill, Eddie, Stanley, and Richie just aren't that interesting. I don't care about Eddie and his overbearing mom. I don't care whether Richie is funny or not. Stanley barely feels like he's in this book compared to how much space is devoted to the others, which I'll take as a win.

The ritual scene, the most notorious part of this book aside from Georgie getting ripped apart in the beginning, is the most puzzling aspect. Ultimately, the kids are meant to discover that things that make them weak are the things that make them powerful. Beverly's weakness is tied to her sexuality, at least tied to the perception of her sexuality from the POV of adults in her life. I think there is a version of Beverly's story that ends more solidly with her understanding of what about being a woman makes her powerful.

But why is Beverly's story so strongly tied to sexuality? I understand that the negative perception that's repeatedly drilled into her mind about how sex is bad and if she has sex then she is bad can be thwarted by Beverly having a positive experience with sex and finding power in that. But why does it have to be letting her friends bang her? It subverts the positive outcome for Beverly to realize being a woman is her strength, not her weakness, and instead manifests in a scene where she gratifies her male peers with her body is just very disappointing. It's also not deviating much from the constant tropes King relies on to tell stories about women in his books.

Content Warnings

More...