While I was reading It, it was hard to determine my thoughts on the book objectively—as in, how I felt about the writing and storyline as a whole—because I was too focused on the negative feelings I was taking on from the content. After giving myself a chance to take a little emotional rest and to move past those issues, though, I was able to really look back on the 400-ish pages I read, and realized something:

I genuinely feel that this book has no place in being half the length that it is.

In the 400-ish pages I read, honestly, 150+ of them felt superfluous and could have been cut. I know a lot of people will disagree with this on kneejerk reaction because "it's setting the stage!", and if that's how you truly feel, that fine, but I think it's no coincidence that almost everyone I've spoken to who has read It, regardless of what their feelings on it were, felt that it was about twice as long as it should've been.

There's so much extraneous stuff that it felt like I was barely getting started by the time I put It down, hence my hesitation to give it a star rating and review, but let's be honest: 400 pages is typically an entire book, or close to it! If I dedicated this much time and effort to the story, I have a right to exercise my opinion, and there it is. The story simply isn't entertaining enough to be worth nearly 1,200 pages, and at risk of being stoned to death for heresy, the recent film adaptation of "chapter 1" was excellent, and I'm really looking forward to "chapter 2" next year.