It by Stephen King is probably King’s finest piece of work and a grave disappointment…depending on how you look at it. Back when it came out, it was the talk of everyone. King had outdone himself and created a whole city with a history and believable characters and a scary monster clown. As the years go by, you hear less and less of It and that’s a shame. Because while I feel it’s a grave disappointment, it is only a disappointment because of how good the first 90 percent of the book is. The ending is poorly done and just ruins the book. But up until that point, it’s an amazing journey. So what went wrong?

In the quiet city of Derry, Maine during the fall of 1957, Bill Denbrough is sick in bed, but feeling well enough to make his younger brother George a boat to float in the remains of the flooding after the rain. George goes out and never comes back. As Bill and his friends later discover, there is an ancient monster living beneath the city, which comes out in a regular time intervals. George is just the first of many deaths in that miserable fall. Bill finds himself the leader of a gang of outcasts (known as The Losers)  who believe that the terror is real and want to do something about it.

In the fall of 1984, the horror is starting again. Mike Hanlon, the only member of The Losers who still lives in Derry, starts making calls to the other members of the group. They have all gone onto successful careers (if not successful personal lives), but have strangely forgotten about that horrific fall in 1957. When Mike calls, it all starts coming back to them as they head back to Derry to once again defeat the monster.

The book flips back and forth between the present time of 1984 and the past in 1957. The characters in the present timeline, gather in Derry at the library to reminisce and tell the stories from that fateful fall. This structure lets us see the characters from multiple viewpoints at multiple time in their lives. The setup and execution is amazing. The city and our heroes come to life. The bad guys are also brought out, first as regular bullies and then later as agents of the evil.

In the end, the book shows how they win, both in the past and then again in the present. The method of their victory is cheap and idiotic. It breaks the reader out of the story and makes us realize that we are no longer reading a masterful suspense novel, but a cheesy excuse for a horror ending. I love this book until the ending. It’s the type of story that not only brings you into it, but grabs ahold and makes you feel the growing horror that the characters feel. The city itself comes to life. Mike’s dad loves the city and passes on that love to Mike. This allows us to not only see the city in our two timelines, but also the history. The city truly is a character in this book. And King brings together a amalgam of losers as our heroes: the poor girl, the black kid, the fat kid, the wiseass, the stutterer, the hypochondriac and the studious nerd. But he details them with such love that they transcend their labels and become real people and more than that, real heroes. And with all the kids growing up to be successful (except Mike who stayed in Derry), he manages to convince us that the ordeal they went through in 1957 changed them in such a way that they were able to become successful. For any writer who uses stereotypes to shortcut character development, they should study this book for a lesson on how to use characterization to overcome and still embrace the stereotypes.

The book is over a thousand pages and the first 900+ pages are some of the best storytelling I’ve ever read. If only I’d stopped before they go to fight the evil in the 1957 timeline, I would have a better opinion of it. Highly recommended for the first part of the book. The ending is not recommended at all.