16 January, 2018

REVIEW: IT by Stephen King


Title: It
Author: Stephen King
Series: -
Genres: Horror, Thriller, Fiction
Publisher: New English Library
Release: 1st October, 1987
Source: Audiobook/Kindle
Pages: 1116

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BLURB:

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good place to live.


It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing . . .

The adults, knowing better, knew nothing.

Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.


MARTYNA'S REVIEW

EXPECTATIONS: Going into this one, I knew that people either love or hate it. One of the Youtubers I watch always said that IT was a wonderful book, the best horror doze you can get but it can get a little heavy and weird, and I have to say, I totally agree with this opinion. My expectations were sky high for this, they were met, but at the same time, I also have couple of things to say more.

THE WORLD: We are presented with and given two time period, 1958 and then 1985 or something like that. So we get to see all the characters as kids and then as grownups too. But the world is nothing specific really, it's what we see in the movies, what we have read about in other King's novels and so on.

CHARACTERS: This book is over a thousand pages so imagine how many characters it has! So I will discuss here the so called Losers Club, the bullies and of course the creature IT itself!

So the Losers Club consists of  Ben, Eddie, who believes he has asthma, William or Bill who lost his brother the year before and he also suffers from a stutter and has a bike he adores. Then we have Richie, Stan, the only girls Beverly or Bev for short and Mike. They all have something in their past. Like I said, Bill's brother Georgie died, Bev is being sexually harassed by her father and some bullies, Ben is over-weight and is being bullied for that as well. So they do all kind of decide to be best friends and their life experience is what brings them together. I actually loved the way their conversations were written, just like I would hear some kids talking. I laughed so hard when Bill and fighting with his then still alive brother, it's the exact same way my brother and I would fight when we were kids and had learned English. We get to see them as adults as well, and they all seem to be doing well enough for themselves, of course some tragedy strikes, or it is revealed that their lives aren't so pretty inside as they are outside. Coming back to the story, so the Loser Club, during their school summer, notices that they all have visions of what they fear the most, so Bill sees his dead brother, Ben sees a mummy, Richie a werewolf, I don't remember who but someone sees some dead kids and so on, so they kind of put two things together and realize that before or after their visions they always see a clown. Inspired by this they do some woodoo magic and hipno something and realize who this clown his, they learn his name, where he comes from and so on. I don't want to get into spoilers because it's very very easy really. 
But as I said, they do come back as adult people as well.

We also see the bullies and villains as kids and then as adults, however we only get to see one IT or Pennywise the clown. It was so scary you guys, I will not lie, this book got me good sometimes. It was scary, I never was afraid of clowns but from now on if I ever see a red clown I will throw some salt over myself! This villain is amazing! So effing wonderful!
 
ROMANCE: I actually did not see romantic relations in this book. Of course there were cute kid love moments or adult love, but romance or falling in love was no not the focus of the book.

GOOD: The idea, the clown was scary, I think the book was developed and finished in good way. The characters were likable.

BAD: I'm not gonna lie guys, there are certain events in the book, certain things that happen, or themes that are touched that I was not really OK with. There was times when I thought about just stopping to read it, or just being very angry and just so confused with what the hell was happening, but I dunno, I pushed through and if you can understand those events or take them as important part of the story it doesn't ruin the reading experience!

OVERALL: In any case I did love this book after all! I had a blast reading it. It was funny, scary, gross, I teared up a little at times. It was a good read!




HANNAHCASSIE's REVIEW

EXPECTATIONS: I have read seven or so books of Stephen King before and frankly was not really planning to read it as most of people I follow hated it but then it got so big because of the movie that I just wanted to see what the whole hype is about.

THE WORLD: More or less like ours but the story timeline jumps from past to present a lot as we visit the childhood of our main characters and then go to see what they are doing as adults. It is actually an old release so the timeline of present is not exactly today but 20 more years back. Additionally to this ordinary world we have some fantastical mystery elements that is often hard to differentiate if it is just imagination of children or actually happening. 

CHARACTERS: The group that this story is really about is made of Ben, Eddie, William, Richie, Stan, Mike and Beverly. A lot I know. Actually even in such a long book way too many. As children they are all best friends but then later majority leaves town and well life happens. What really annoyed me when it comes to the characters is that if one had some trauma as a child then their future lives as adults are really messed up. For example Beverly is abused by her father as a child and then later when she is a grown woman suddenly she needs a partner who is incredibly abusive and controlling. Same for other characters, I won't go into detail because that would be spoiling things but majority are really messed up because of their childhood traumas which I know is not really a case in reality, trauma does not automatically make you into a messed up person, time actually does do a lot for your psychology. Or at least that's what psychology studies say and well people experience. Anyways so the idea of this book is that all these kids start to see what they fear most and then things start to get wrong from there on. 

ROMANCE: I would say the way romantic relationships are showed in this book is very messed up. There is a lot of abuse and cheating and just in general if you believe this book world is a very horrible place to live in. I always said this and keep saying, if you really love your wife/husband like this book tells us about some characters you do not go and sleep with your teenager crush. It is just not realistic, you either love or you don't. 

GOOD: Maybe not so good for book itself but frankly this book made me less scared of clowns :D And in general, I like the idea but other than that there are way better books of King out there. 

BAD: I somehow think that this book was very strong representation on how sexist King can be and it just screams that IT was written by a man. There are some scenes where female characters would say or do things that no woman that I know would ever even think of saying or doing. 

Also I feel this is not talked enough but there is an orgy scene in this book where all the boys have sex with Beverly one after another when they all are 12 or so. Yes she literary just lies there and they come one after another to have sex with her. King explains this scene as the characters defining IT as in sex is IT. But which 12 years old is scared of sex? I mean really think about it. Not even boys are yet interested in it, majority of children don't even know what sex really is at age of 12. Remember this is like in sixtieth! And really let's be realistic, this scene in book somehow is okay but they cut it from the movie but we all know that if it was in the movie it would have done really really bad and called really bad names. Double standards I guess. But yes be aware there is child pornography in this book. 

OVERALL: I really really discourage anybody reading this book. It is far from best work of King and it has just so many problems that it will just leave you mad and disappointed that you wasted so much time reading it. Also it is not scary in my opinion at all. So yeah do not recommend. 

What do you think about IT?

 

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