It

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Steven Weber

Length: 44 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: 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.

©1986 Stephen King (P)2010 Penguin Audio

Superb Narration

The narration enhanced the greatness of the story .
I have already watched the movie but listening to it made me imagine everything so well that I fell in love with the story all over again.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Eerie reminder

So this book made me think back to my childhood and hit the nail on the head on how when we are children the world seems so different. Funny how the older we get the less durable and because of that we take less risks. I loved how the past and present play out at the same time and how children had to become grown up before their time to fight a seemingly unstoppable evil!

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Terrifyingly Wonderful

Incredibly absorbing and intricate story with impeccable vocal performance. Enjoyed every second of it, a true Stephen King classic come alive with Webers many voices.

You'll float too

Great voices and reading.

I enjoyed this a lot, and down here you'll enjoy it too.

Could of done with an editor

Once you listen to this story, you feel that there was much that could of been cut out to get the story moving. Some things are just fillers like characters and descriptions of action. I think the sex scenes were not needed and there were opportunities missed where the book could of been more heavily layered and scarier. I am sure if Stephen King was to write this book again he would make it even better. Will be interesting to see how the new film version works with this book. Steven Weber is excellent with the narration. Worth listening to even before tucking into bed.

Excellent performance

I have read this book many years ago and thought it was quite good. This time around I thought it was a bit too long.

Steven Weber's performance was however excellent. He gave life to the book and I will definitely look for other books that he narrated

Obscene

Great performance by the narrator but this book is obscene and painfully, painfully drawn out. It goes over the same territory again and again and is full of horror for the sake of horror. I've read many Stephen King books and enjoyed most but this will be my last. It is littered with often perverted sexual acts involving children. I don't see why this is necessary and I felt sick to the stomach listening to these moments. At a length of over 45 hours, I would steer well clear of this one.

2 of 7 people found this review helpful

Good but too long

The story was too meandering with no proper flow. The narrator was excellent though, and made you feel part of the story

0 of 2 people found this review helpful

Masterful - a horror classic

If you could sum up It in three words, what would they be?

Elegant, sinister, terrifying.

What did you like best about this story?

Stephen King has stated that his aim for "It" was to write his thesis on horror - to include everything that scared him as a child and adult. I think he has achieved this. It's a masterwork in terror. Although he has better known books, this for me is his scariest work. It is a long work following the youth and grown-up lives of several friends in a small Maine town. Both the children and the adults they become have well-realised damages and fears, and this relatability makes the scary encounters even more powerful. An iconic work I would recommend to anyone who fancies a chill sent expertly down their spine.

What about Steven Weber’s performance did you like?

Steven Weber reads immensely well, with passion and flair. It's more of a performance than a straight read, with each character given a distinct voice. And perhaps most important of all - his Pennywise is blood-curdling!

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

"They all float down here..."

69 of 85 people found this review helpful

It, Three Decades Later . . .

It, the shortest of titles for probably one of the longest books most of us will ever read in this genre.

It, the simplest of titles for probably one of the deepest and multi-layered horror books in existence.

It really is something special and one of my personal all-time favourite books though I wonder how people coming fresh to it now might see it. More to the point I doubt such a book as this would survive a modern editor’s attentions intact. King didn’t throw everything but the kitchen sink at it he threw that first and then started ripping up the floor tiles and threw them and everything else besides at it too. The book follows the stories of a group of children and how they find each other through the debris of their dysfunctional childhoods and then into their adult lives using a non-linear dual timeline to cover both. Each of them suffers a form of abuse and of course with it being King are not spared from more supernatural horrors. King imbues each of his characters with real depth and personality. He doesn’t seem to believe in extras either with even bit part characters like bar men and a taxi driver who only appear fleetingly being given detail and personality of their own.

The narration. I was somehow expecting creepy but Steven Weber is bright and breezy, particularly well-suited to the childhood parts and moves things along at a refreshing pace. Where he scores highly is the way he almost literally throws himself into the emotion of each of King’s carefully realised situations. The combination of writer and narrator is stunningly powerful at times and the tension ratchets up to extreme levels during the most important encounters.

As you read through the book what’s impressive is that King holds the attention both to the coming of age tale of the children including their experience of bullying, parental situations and the like as he does with the outright horror of It. The adults have equally compelling tales, as does the town of Derry itself. By the end of the book you will feel like a regular Derry old-timer able to recount tails of its history to any young ‘uns that might happen along.

The only question in my mind is for anyone coming to this fresh. Listening to King’s other classics like The Stand and The Dead Zone, stories I am re-visiting decades later, I have been delighted by how vibrant and fresh they’ve felt after all this time. With It I do have some nagging doubts. Clowns weren’t exactly new in horror when King wrote the book in 1986 but in the intervening years we’ve had a lot of horror clowns and they have become a quite hackneyed aspect of horror. Coupling that with the lack of editorial censure King was subjected to and I do suspect some might not find it as entertaining as I have.

In all though, regardless of those things this is one of the absolute horror classics and the way that King ends it for this group of grown-up children is incredibly poignant. This is a long journey and a dark path to tread but I am so glad I walked it again thirty years on. In a way that parallel to the story made me feel in some small way a part of It.

39 of 50 people found this review helpful

gripping

Despite its length it never feels like it is dragging, allowing you to become enthralled in the characters lives and sucks you in like a vacuum to story

21 of 27 people found this review helpful

Well worth a read

I'm not a fan of horror and would not watch the movie 'It', however, this book was completely gripping and enjoyable. The narrator is fantastic and through his voice, tone and expression is able to bring the story to life. The book is long but not laborious and I eagerly looked forward to the time when I could listen again as I commuted to work. I really recommend it.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

This interpretation

I have read this book many times, but this interpretation went way beyond anything I'd imagined.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

Fantastic

I had been waiting for this to come out in audiobook format for a long time and I wasn't disappointed.
The story is very detailed and incredibly engrossing.
The narrator does and excellence job and I can't recommend this book highly enough.

11 of 14 people found this review helpful

One of his best!

First read this long novel about twenty years ago- a brilliant read (took me about six months if memory serves! ). When I saw it on Audible, I knew I had to have it; had to visit my old friends in Derry again. I wasn't disappointed at all. Superbly read by Steven Weber. Highly recommended :-)

13 of 17 people found this review helpful

Finally available in the UK!

Home alone and had to turn it off and put all the lights on! Petrified

11 of 15 people found this review helpful

I loved, loved, loved this book!

And I mean I loved everything about it! I love Stephen King anyway but the narrator here brought this story completely alive. It was just brilliant from start to finish. I didn't want it to end! Please let Stephen webber narrate more Stephen King! they're a perfect match

10 of 14 people found this review helpful

Gave up half way

I have enjoyed previous King books but found It to be slow going. I just did not care about the characters and found the flashbacks tedious. Maybe it picked up a little pace later but it was too late for me.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful