I've never been a fan of horror. What scares others mildly, scares me senseless and leaves me sleepless. Stephen King is one of the most famous horror writers and IT is one of his most famous books. I debated a lot in my head before buying this book. In the end I decided to do it. Mainly because I was once scared of Harry Potter because I watched a couple of scary movie scenes, but once I started reading it, I was so totally blown away.
It took me a couple of weeks or maybe more to finish IT. It is, quite literally, heavy reading. So if you plan on reading the book you need patience and time. Probably an endless supply of the former. In the beginning, the book didn't make that much sense. Once I finished part 1, I really got into it. That's when I started enjoying it. The story follows seven young children all bullied due to various factors meeting by chance and bonding over the summer vacation. The town they live in has had a large number of murdered children in the past year. More have gone missing. Each of the children are nearly kidnapped or killed and this makes them determined to seek out this demon that has been plaguing their town. There, that's the basic story.
Once you get into it, the story is not all that dark and gruesome. Most of it is about the friendship between the children and their secret hideout in an abandoned area. It almost made me miss friends I never had. That was the most important part of the book. Ultimately that is what it is about : the bond between these seven friends and the imagination and innocence of the young minds. I loved it so much that when it ended I felt sort of empty.
The book was an interesting ride. The really gruesome parts didn't affect me all that much mostly because it's not in my capacity to imagine this stuff. I wouldn't call it tragic. All stories have an element of tragedy in them. The tragedy in this would be more pronounced and the ending was a bit disappointing and really sad. It's not exactly a story for horror lovers. It's the children that matter. Their easy friendship despite having almost nothing in common and just accepting each other's shortcomings made them seem way more mature than eleven-year-olds.
And let me reiterate this fact : The movies are not a patch on the books. It is probably because of the fact that the book is more than a thousand pages long and incredibly detailed. The movies only had time to focus on the main elements that is the villain and the fights. But that is not what makes it so appealing. I have my own saying for that; never judge a book by its movie.