Somehow I had never gotten around to reading It. Probably because it is such a long book. So long. And so heavy too. Probably the best way to sum it up is that it is pretty much the ultimate Stephen King book. It is the most "Stephen King" of Stephen King books. Most every element in the book has appeared in other King works. A group of kids on a mission, neighborhood bullies, people possessed, an otherworldly entity, lots of movie/music/literature references, way too long for its own good, small town setting, a main character that is a novelist, etc... Still I enjoyed it. My main complaint is the length. It could easily have been 600 pages shorter. It got a bit repetitive with seven main characters all having a similar story - they each individually encounter It/Pennywise, get scared, and run away and escape. With this repeating again with them as adults. A-
Also I'll mention that maybe some enjoyment of the book was tempered by recent current events. When what's going on in the world is worse than the events in a horror novel it probably says something about America. Yeah Pennywise gets a dozen kids but in real life anyone can easily get a gun and do far worse. And when the evil in the world is visibly worse than the evil in a fantasy horror book it is quite sad.
