Gwendy's Final Task (3) (Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy)

I was hesitant to read this since it wasn't just Stephen King. I loved all three books! This is definitely my favorite of the three. They just keep getting better. Mr. Chizmar is exceptional enough to write with the King! There's nothing gruesome about this series, but it IT IS very scary! Keeps you on the edge of your seat. The way it ties in with other King stories is another perk.

One really needs to know that GWENDY'S FINAL TASK is the finale of a trilogy and that one really needs to have read the first two GWENDYs before this one, and also that the first and last are co-written by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, with the middle one written by Chizmar alone. All the novels are, at least for Stephen King, very short, almost novella length. But they are all tasty as the tiny magic chocolates than the magical Button Box dispenses.

In the first, GWENDY'S BUTTON BOX, 12 year old Gewndy Peterson meets an odd little man wearing a Bowler hat in the park. After a rather length palaver, the stranger, Richard Farris (in all of KIng's novels dating back to THE STAND, character's with the initials RF are never simply what they seem), gives Gwendy a little wooden box studded with different color push buttons and 2 levers on the side. One lever dispenses miraculous exquisitely shaped tiny chocolates in the form of some animal, aways different. The chocolates are the most delicious ever, and have some other interesting properties. The other lever dispenses an 1891 silver dollar. The buttons are a different matter, and Farris tells Gwendy how they work and how incredibly dangerous they are. And then Farris is gone.

Gewndy makes use of the Button Box a few times in the first two novels, relinquishing the box back to Farris at the end of each. Here, in GWENDY'S LAST TASK, Gewndy is a US Senator and a past member of of the House of Representatives, and for the first time in over 20 years, Farris reappears with the dreaded Button Box. He looks very different, older, sicker than the last time and gives the box to Gewndy with a specific set of instructions.

Anything else would be a real spoiler, but it should come as no surprise to any Stephen King fans that he frequently refers back to other works in his oeuvre and GWENDY'S FINAL TASK is no exception, being closely tied to THE DARK TOWER novels, the novella LOW MEN IN YELLOW COATS, and a couple of others. The plot is great, at 278 pages this is the longest of the Gwendy novels and, I think, the best.

I could tell that this isn't solely Stephen King's writing, but just barely. The ideas, pacing and writing are so similar to pure SK (as was the case with GWENDY's MAGIC FEATHER) that King and Chizmar could probably (and did probably on occasion) finish each other's sentences, while talking or writing.

Very Highly Recommended.

JM Tepper

...this was sometimes a hard book to read. The culmination of Gwendy's journey was often magical and thought-provoking like the previous two installments, but unlike those, also often annoying and groan-inducing.

I love you, Stephen King, but the anti Trump stuff wore old long ago, and though it probably seems right to you, even a marginally political guy like myself is shaken out of even well-crafted stories by the obvious GOP=bad trope. I get it. You believe Republican white man is everything bad in the world (in EVERY world) and must be stopped at all costs.

It's fine that you have that opinion, of course, but must it be involved in stories like this? I read to escape, not to feel like my dreams are being invaded by CNN droning on whilst I sleep.

All that said, I thought the ending was beautifully done and hit just the right note of sentimentality and whimsy, as well as accomplishing the difficult task of bringing about a sense of closure while leaving all the right questions unanswered.

When I read the first part, I never could have guessed this was how it would end (and I think the covid stuff will age poorly) but it was a magical and unique ride nonetheless.

Well done, guys.