It, by Stephen King

This book, with the title that has total disregard for SEO, is among Stephen King’s most popular, but I didn’t love it. I liked it. I liked parts of it. But as a whole, it’s meh for me.

For one, I don’t think clowns are scary. They may be creepy, but I’d rather see a clown in a storm drain than a spider. You can talk to a clown and maybe reason with the jokester. A spider? They are silent spies of the devil! They don’t talk. They don’t bark. They just…exist. They all pretend they don’t understand English, except for Charlotte and I’m wondering if the words she spelled out in the pig pen were actually AI generated. How else do you explain the weird phrasing of, “Some Pig”? I ran Charlotte’s oeuvre through the AI detector and I think they should rename the book ChatGPT’s Web. Busted! 

Back to clowns. They’re not scary. Pennywise can, and does, take the shape of a spider at times (I think…it’s been a while since I read this). And if the whole book was him as a spider, I would like the book more. 

The scary scenes in the book are actually kind of silly…maybe even stupid. I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read the book, but don’t expect Exorcist-level frights. 

I do like the non-scary parts. Stephen King has a knack for creating interesting characters and watching the kids (and their adult selves) interact is great. But it starts to drag around page 600.

This is one of King’s longest books, and as much as I liked the characters, the overall story isn’t really worthy of all 1,000 pages. 

Then there’s the out-of-left-field sex scene between the kids that everyone who read the book loves to mention. Why did King include this scene? Either he was trying to say something poignant about the loss of innocence and overstepped, or he didn’t know how to end the story and threw a dart at the ol’ idea board and it landed on, “Sex party.” 

A lot of people love this book, and I can kinda see why. I’m just not a huge fan. I love a lot of King’s other works, but this isn’t a top tier entry in his mountain of books. 

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