Book #38 of 2022:
Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (The Button Box #3)
I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed this latest Stephen King / Richard Chizmar collaboration, given how I was generally lukewarm on the authors’ original Gwendy’s Button Box and cared even less for Chizmar’s solo followup Gwendy’s Magic Feather. And coming in with accordingly low expectations, I’ll admit I rolled my eyes a bit at the setup here. The returning heroine — a precocious teen in the former tale and novelist-turned-politician in the latter — is now a 64-year-old US Senator and first-time astronaut? She’s somehow taking her magic box thing on the rocket without having to tell anyone what it is, and hiding the early stages of her creeping Alzheimer’s to boot? Sure, fellows. Okay.
What saves the piece, I think, is that it is not really aiming to be a conclusion to those earlier novellas, but rather a Dark Tower-adjacent standalone. The year is 2026, and Gwendy’s launch is being run by the Tet Corporation! There are Taheen, those Sombra-aligned low men in yellow coats, scheming to use the button box to bring down the Tower! I doubt any of this wholly works if you are not one of King’s “Constant Readers” deeply enmeshed in that weird wild lore — there’s some terrific material on the malevolent atmosphere of Derry, Maine as well — but it’s a wavelength I personally love, and it makes this title click in a way the Gwendy series never has for me before. I would almost even say you could probably skip the first two volumes entirely, if you’re primarily checking this out as a Dark Tower fan.
As for the plot, it unfolds in two parallel timeframes: the mission to space, where the protagonist is keeping her deteriorating mental faculties to herself and planning ahead for her secret special objective with the box, and a dash of new backstory gradually revealing what has set her on this unexpected path to begin with. Both are solidly good, although there’s a lot of unnecessary fatphobia directed against the Trump-like villain, and I think it’s pretty tasteless for the writers to ascribe a supernatural cause to the Covid-19 pandemic (as they had previously done for the Jonestown massacre in book one, it should be noted).
Overall, however, this is a fine adventure and (literal) sendoff to the character and her trilogy, which I’ve liked far more than I feel I could have reasonably expected. And since I gave the debut story a middle-of-the-road three stars for its rating, I suppose this stronger sequel has earned an extra one from me.
[Content warning for ableism, racism, car accident, insectophobia, and gore.]
This volume: ★★★★☆
Overall series: ★★★☆☆
Volumes ranked: 3 > 1 > 2
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