Epic Horror . Review on It - Stephen King

If any Horror Novel could be called Epic, 'IT' by Stephen King is just that. As an avid Stephen King fan, I read the book, mainly for the fact that the book was nice and thick, and therefore would take me a long time to get through, giving me more time to savour this master of Horror and Terror.

The beginning

'IT' is a story centering around a group of seven friends and something that lives in the sewers of a small town called Derry in Maine. The story begins off inoccently enough, with Bills younger brother, five (?) years old, sails a paper boat in the road side gutters after a thunderstorm. The boat disappears into a grating at the side of the road leading to the sewer system. The little boy peeks in to see where his boat has gone, and all he sees are two yellow eyes, and then the face of Pennywise the Clown, with orange hair, and holding ballons, offering the balloons to him. He reaches forward, and his arm is ripped off and he lies bleeding, and dies at the edge of the road......

The characters

Seven kids - Ben the fat kid with an inferiority complex, Stanley the jewish kid next door , Beverly the daughter of a abusive drunk who is divorced, Eddie the asthmatic kid who actually is just fine and is made to believe he is weak by his domineering MOm, Will Hanlon a black kid quiet and reserved, Ritchie ''motormouth' the wise guy with a sarcastic sense of humour who talks to much and Bill, the hero of the story who's brother is killed, and who has a stuttering problem, are all drawn together by different circumstances and form a bond of friendship. The friendship is strengthened when they all realise that they are linked in someway through the extremely terrifying experiences they have all had - all pet fears - for Ben it is the Mummy he sees, Beverly hears voices in the plumbing and Ritchie sees a werewolf and so on........They become fast friends, playing together in the waste land near the sewage outfall, and commonly unite against the neighbourhood bully who is extremely cruel and dangerous.

The story

The story switches easily from past to present, and after the prologue where Bills brother is killed, the story moves to present day, where each of the friends receives a phone call by the one person who had chosen to stay behind in Derry - Will Hanlon. He calls them to tell them that everything had started again. As each one heeds the call to return to Derry to fight the unnameable evil, they remember terrifying incidents from their child hood, where they together fought the evil that had killed Bills brother. Stanleys memories of the past are so horrible that he commits suicide rather than going back to Derry to face the evil again.

As they meet up in Derry, the switches from their past to the present become more frantic, as they start remembering more and more of those evil horrific experiences, and as they get closer to hunting 'IT' down, the memories are closer entwined with the final battle they had with IT when they were children. The past and present merge together in a final climax in the underground sewers of Derry.

Endnote

The book is truly evil and terrifying one; like the scene in which Stanley is alone in the park near the water standpipe, and he can feel and hear the dead body of a kid who was drowned in the standpipe squelching its way down the stairs, or how when Bill opens the album to see pictures of Georgie, his younger brother bleeding, or even how Beverly hears voices calling to her from the sink, and blood comes gushing out of the sink ........

This epic story is frightening, is heartwarming in the bonds forged between the kids, is funny at places and is told in a narrative style that keeps you hooked to the book. If you are a King fan and you haven't read this book as yet, you aren't a fan ! If it is going to be your first read, try and bite (pun intended) on Salems Lot first - his book about vampires, and then read IT- another must have !