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nerdyreferencelibrarian89 's review for:
It
by Stephen King
This book was LONG, but extremely good.
This was my only second Stephen King book, so some of my review of his style may be duh statements for hard core fans, but here we go.
IT was an exploration of the town of Derry, which has a curse, or town wide haunting. King does an amazing job intertwining the tale of the Loser Club as kids and as adults, growing up, and then returning to Derry to fight a creature they only know as IT.
It had several scary and chilling moments as a creature, the most uncomfortable involved flying super leeches! However, I think the greatest fear came not from the creature itself, but from the actions of the everyday people subtly having their worse personality traits enhanced. These involved a lecherous leper, a emotionless serial killer, homophobia, sexism, racism, and pretty much every negative emotion humans can have. This is where I found the true horror of the story.
As a word of warning, I was truly shocked at the amount of racism, homophobia, and sexism in the book, but these depictions are a powerful way to demonstrate the subtle influences of IT, as well as the dark depths of humanity.
This book has quite a bit of discussion of childhood, the role that plays for us, and what it means to be a child. This was an unexpected component of the content, but very welcomed, as it lent an layer of extra stuff to consider and think about.
The power of belief was an interesting concept the book used that I really enjoyed.
While there is a lot to love about this book, there are a few things that I don't think quite worked. The biggest was the very weird, very out of place sex scene with the losers as kids. I don't mind the sex in the rest of the book at all, but 10 and 11 year old orgy... no thanks. To make it worse the reason for this scene felt very forced and weird. It also regulated Beverly to just a sex object for the group, which was BLEH. There were so many other ways to handle fixing the group getting lost, this just didn't work.
I wish Stan had a more major role in the group, he dies right at the beginning of the book, and sort of plays a back role in the story from that point on. In many ways he felt like the least fleshed out and least interesting person in the group. Being Jewish isn't enough of an identity to be a fully fleshed out character.
Overall I would strongly recommend this book to anyone looking for an amazing horror epic, that ends on a really solid note. It is incredibly LONG, so it is a huge commitment, but it is definitely worth it.
This was my only second Stephen King book, so some of my review of his style may be duh statements for hard core fans, but here we go.
IT was an exploration of the town of Derry, which has a curse, or town wide haunting. King does an amazing job intertwining the tale of the Loser Club as kids and as adults, growing up, and then returning to Derry to fight a creature they only know as IT.
It had several scary and chilling moments as a creature, the most uncomfortable involved flying super leeches! However, I think the greatest fear came not from the creature itself, but from the actions of the everyday people subtly having their worse personality traits enhanced. These involved a lecherous leper, a emotionless serial killer, homophobia, sexism, racism, and pretty much every negative emotion humans can have. This is where I found the true horror of the story.
As a word of warning, I was truly shocked at the amount of racism, homophobia, and sexism in the book, but these depictions are a powerful way to demonstrate the subtle influences of IT, as well as the dark depths of humanity.
This book has quite a bit of discussion of childhood, the role that plays for us, and what it means to be a child. This was an unexpected component of the content, but very welcomed, as it lent an layer of extra stuff to consider and think about.
The power of belief was an interesting concept the book used that I really enjoyed.
While there is a lot to love about this book, there are a few things that I don't think quite worked. The biggest was the very weird, very out of place sex scene with the losers as kids. I don't mind the sex in the rest of the book at all, but 10 and 11 year old orgy... no thanks. To make it worse the reason for this scene felt very forced and weird. It also regulated Beverly to just a sex object for the group, which was BLEH. There were so many other ways to handle fixing the group getting lost, this just didn't work.
I wish Stan had a more major role in the group, he dies right at the beginning of the book, and sort of plays a back role in the story from that point on. In many ways he felt like the least fleshed out and least interesting person in the group. Being Jewish isn't enough of an identity to be a fully fleshed out character.
Overall I would strongly recommend this book to anyone looking for an amazing horror epic, that ends on a really solid note. It is incredibly LONG, so it is a huge commitment, but it is definitely worth it.