Review | SPOILERS? | The Outsider by Stephen King

Today is a requested video: my thoughts on The Outsider by Stephen King. Depending on your sensitivity, this has some light spoilers.

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[Rez_Boy]

He had straws for eyes...


If you don't get it I understand

[laurencurtis]

I haven't read very many Steven King books. I very recently started getting into them. But I did read this and I didn't know that there is a Bill Hodges trilogy, so now I definitely have to read that. That aside, I still enjoyed this book. I like the creepy build up and honestly felt that the ending had a pretty nice wrap up. The only thing I would've liked to see happen that didn't was more of how the story they built to hide the supernatural played out with the characters involved. Like them actually conversing with the necessary officials.

[taylantepekoy]

Distance between fingers blocked for a couple of seconds and those seconds were important. I guess...

[zantos]

I couldn't believe this book is 4.0/5.0 on Goodreads. The first 200 pages or so are decent, but after that it becomes an absolute grind. It felt King had no idea what to do with the plot after coming up with an okay premise. By resorting to some ridiculous supernatural character as a resolve to the mystery is a complete cop-out and horrible writing. When the book first starts to introduce the concept of 'the outsider' I took it as a joke, but after reading several hundred pages and finding out that's exactly what King's going for, I was infuriated the more I read it. Pure deus ex machina like someone mentioned in the comments. Shockingly bad book.

[f.m]

Holly pretty much saved the book! the first half was just a disaster!
although, I did like the outsider(the creature) and how he went down. This whole thing was about an insignificant creature trying to be bigger than it is and devastating many lives to make itself feel better! it even said "you'll find I'm stronger than I look even in my weaken state" and then Holly destroyed it so easily! it wasn't just pretending to be other people, everything about it was just pretend! and in the end, it was just a bag of maggots! kinda sad this creature was wasted in this book!

[jhonnydavidyovera]

good to hear your opinion! I really enjoyed the book :)

[sonflaw]

*Spoiler


I completely agree regarding the ending, it didn't have the perplexity and suspense of other final battle's with the antagonist. It felt like it boiled down to "don't shoot me or the cave ceiling will collapse". I liked Ralph, Yune and Holly's characters a lot though. Now I'm on the market for Mr. Mercedes for sure!

[henrikpettersson]

I think the ending was a bit dissapointing but the begining was pretty good. It made one wonder what was going on.

[benedington]

I have to disagree. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. King is no Agatha Christie, but I thought it was certainly better than Sleeping Beauties.

[zlee]

My first king book. Omg i hate it. I hate books with bad plot. Because i will not start any other book beforr finishing it yet reading last bit of the book is such a chore. I literally skip the ending of "american psycho" i cant take it. Its so dull. I dont want to skip the outsiders ending but its so bad.

[Aafox]

I have to disagree with you. I read this once and remembered most of the plot. But I do agree the ending could have been better. I only comment now because I started the tv series they are doing on it so I was interested on some book opinions.

[joefpsunset]

You are spot on. This is my least favorite of all of his novels and I have read almost all of them. I struggled and forced myself to finish this book. I'm not sure he even wrote this one but that's another story...

[andywylde]

I found it a bit of a chore to finish. Disappointed with the ending. Looking forward to the tv series to see how it compares.

[xbemxtwickz]

I read this and loved it. i liked your point of it's hard to believe in 2018-19 because it's so out of this world but i love this because it took me out of my reality at school

[samforsyth]

SPOILERS. Brutal! I liked it. But if I had to say ONE thing that bothered me about it... I’d say that from the very beginning I believed that Terry Maitland was innocent... I might have liked it better if at first I was A little fooled.

[divad]

I loved this book just finished it. Some scenes in this booker scared me senseless. But I totally agree with your view on it not meshing well. But still overall I definitely enjoyed it

[billkeon]

I loved the detective story aspect, I was locked in the whole way. When the supernatural aspect comes in, King usually loses me a bit. In the end I give it a 4. The reason the endings can be flat sometimes is that supernatural endings often don’t satisfy because in real life for me the supernatural is not credible. In fiction though, the supernatural gives you too many easy outs - implausible or unsatisfying resolutions. For instance, if the villain is supernatural, why couldn’t he just invade all the characters that were chasing him and just make them commit suicide or exploding them with a supernatural energy etc. I still enjoy IT and The Stand, Pet Semetary etc because you can suspend disbelief. But it only goes so far. And I kind of resenting Holly and other characters sometimes lecturing the reader on how deficient you are if you don’t believe in a higher power or god or supernatural. It happens on occasion in his novels regrettably, but he’s still one of my fav authors

[CharlotteRKO]

I felt exactly the same about this book. It started off really well and was addictive but then took a downward turn. It seemed almost pointless to read with the ending being as it was. That being said, it was written well and I felt like I knew the characters.

[ajayaleman]

It started off so promising, and disturbing. It’s like something out of a CSI episode. Then suddenly the ending was just a BIG let down... obviously not his best book, but the ending could’ve been better. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️

[michaelfeeney]

I wouldn’t give it a 1, but the first half was better than the last. Agree about the ending. His best modern book is Revival. I loved it from page one to the very end.