** spoiler alert ** NOVEMBER 17:

Now finished reading it. Would give it 4½ stars, except GoodReads doesn't allow ½ star ratings.

This is one of the best modern horror books ever with kids as main characters; and Pennywise the Clown is one of the most scary characters ever.

I could write a lot about why I think this lengthy novel is so extremely good, but let me instead mention why I don't go all the way and give it 5 stars:

There is an underlying--the reader slowly learns--Lovecraftian theme hiding somewhere in the background of the story. This is cool enough, and for the most time is done well and in tune with the characters (which we follow 50% of the time when they are children), but there is a jarring moment where Stephen King tries to go into a "Lovecraftian writing mode" in describing the whole "Horrible Cosmos" element--and it fails badly! Okay, I suppose it is written the way it is written because King tries to tell it the way a child would tell it... And I can follow the idea and reason for it--after all it is the strongly rational kid who has this "revelation" (hence we have a kind of kid parallel to a Lovecraftian type of protagonist, hehe). But it just doesn't ring true! There's been no events up till then that, IMO, should give Stan the kid a reason to begin thinking those extreme, metaphysical thoughts, and since it is done in a manner that doesn't even really hit the mark (sounds more like another misunderstanding of Lovecraft's ideas, and another of the poor Mythos pastiche), that part was an annoying read. (See p. 411 for this scene; you may disagree.)

I greatly enjoy the whole "turtle, Chüd, Other" scenes where we get amazing, fantastic across-the-universe-nearing-damning-Other-Universe/World" scenes. But why, o why does the Turtle has to sound like some laid-back, cool rockish person--with "son" thrown in for good measures, when talking to Bill? And, later, the "good Power (God?)" uses the same phrase. Breaks the magic, in my opinion, that such a creature should talk like that.

The other frustrating element is that too much of what the kids do (also as grownups) sounds too much like "chess pieces put into play". As if they don't ever really have a choice in the matter. A critique e.g. John Irving has often had thrown his way. Now, I could live with that--if it wasn't for King's jarring, too freqent mentioning of it. Argh. Quite frequently he has one of the characters get the feeling that there really wasn't a choice, and that someone/-thing higher was making it all happen. Irving at least doesn't spell it out to the reader.

Since this, crucial, element isn't really explained in the end--in any way--it ended up being a kind of "easy way out" in terms of having this-and-this happen at that-and-that precise moment, for everything to fall (more or less) neatly into place. Frustrating.

Even so, as you can imagine from the 4½ stars, this is a great, great novel; and most of the time it works wonders. If you like detailed, believable stories evolving around childhood, kids & unnamable horrors set in a (initially, at least) realistic, day-to-day environment--this is the book! This is how kids are at that age.