A review by klor
It by Stephen King

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

An absolutely dense story filled with rich character studies, friendships, and the horrors of a small town in New England. There are a lot of things I loved here: the tenderness of the Losers' friendship, the nostalgic callbacks to their summer in their childhood, how IT could also be an allegory for how ambivalent a small town is, the Derry Interludes and Mike's voice and stories that gives the world they live in a very rich context, the genuine scares I got reading some parts of the book
from the built up of Stan's suicide and the very human violence of Tom and Henry to the claustrophobia in the sewers
, I'm glad we also got to explore everyone's backstories and their motivations even if sometimes, as a reader, you know the choices they make aren't the best. There were also a few problems like how the women in this book on how it deals with excess whether it's the racism or misogyny in order to drive the point home. The near end also felt a little unfocused as if King didn't know how to end the novel but the actual endings tied things up well and gave readers a hopeful look on the Losers' futures. I do love the book format a lot and hope the adaptions follow the back and forth more ala Little Women (2019) rather than splitting it up in two parts. The childhood nostalgia and trauma hits more within the context and really tells a story less about freaky clowns and more about children trying to navigate their early years with all this tragedies (big or small or personal) around them and how their experiences manifested even further in their adulthood, and vice versa.
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