I'm not quite 100 pages in. Enjoying it quite a bit. The story isn't as epic as The Stand (obviously) at this point, but the characters are much better. Or perhaps how the characters are handled is better. That foreboding sense of doom, even in normal situations, just saturates the narrative. I'm at the point where they're all getting the call from Mike, bringing them back to Derry. The family* who had everything going right--job, house, etc.--but still felt that something was wrong in the background, felt really familiar to me. It was a kind of fear that I think everyone has, worrying about mundane things like keeping the kids safe and getting older. More than any other King story, this had my heart racing as I lay in bed at night reading. The sense of nameless ("It!") panic was so thick.
I think this will be my last DT tie-in before taking the DT plunge, unless there's one that you guys say is too good to skip. I still haven't read Rose Madder, Skeleton Crew, Everything's Eventual, or Regulators. I do not plan to ever finish Talisman, which means BH too.
* [I'm awful at remembering character names: