I made it through to the finish line!!! I'm pretty sure I now know more about the history of Derry, Maine than the actual city I grew up in.
1. The writing was surprisingly funny, and even during the final confrontation with IT, I was laughing while I read. I'll admit, though, the scary/spooky moments didn't usually rattle me at all.
2. The book was way longer than it needed to be, which made the pace feel more and more off as the story spooled out.
3. Stephen King is a master at description, and I can see why this book got as long as it did because he couldn't seem to resist adding as much detail as possible. Setting aside the story's overall structure and pace to zoom in on the sentences themselves, though, a lot of the setting/character descriptions are absolutely fantastic. I took a lot of notes and want to go back and study a handful that I thought worked especially well.
4. In comparison to the movie, the book treats its characters much better and gives everyone (a lot) of room to breathe. Every person in the Loser's Club contributes in an important way, and the movie consolidates a lot of that into just a few characters. (For example, in the book, Ben is the builder + Mike is the Derry historian. In the movie, Ben is both the builder and the Derry historian, etc.)
5. That said, the book's treatment of Beverly deeply frustrated me. Without going too much into it, this is what tends to happen when you have one female character of any importance. They must be all things to everyone else, and thereby end up underserved as a character.
6. Things get a bit muddled with IT's backstory and some of the larger universe world-building, but the world-building of Derry itself is deeply impressive.
7. Two words: child orgy. But if we set that unnecessary bizarreness aside, I was really fond of everyone in the Loser's Club by the end and although I was relieved to leave Derry, I was sad to be leaving the Loser's Club behind, too.
As endings go, it made sense for the book's world and was sad, yet sweet. (Though after 1000+ pages, I could have done with a little more sweet than sad.)