This reviewer encountered Gwendy’s Final Task (2022) without realising it’s the final book in The Gwendy Trilogy from Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. While it would help to have read its predecessors Gwendy’s Button Box (2017) and Gwendy’s Magic Feather (2019), the adventure novella can be read as a stand-alone.
Set in 2026, the story begins with 64-year-old US Senator and successful novelist Gwendy Peterson taking possession of the mysterious “button box”, which we are told has previously entered her life twice. This time, her task is to destroy it once and for all.
As its name implies, the box has a number of coloured buttons that promise horrific death and destruction. Any custodian of the box will be tempted to push the buttons, and the temptation only grows stronger and more malevolent as time goes by.
For that matter, the box also has two leavers that dispense silver dollars and chocolate treats, the use of which will bring “good luck”, stimulating one’s mind while instilling feelings of euphoria – all the more to make it highly appealing to further explore the box’s dark powers.
Thanks to her friend as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gwendy is able to get on board the Eagle-19 Heavy rocket that is set to reach the MF-1 space station. It is there that she plans to dispose of the box in outer space.
However, Gwendy faces two obstacles. One is the evil forces seeking to possess the box in whatever hideous and despicable way they can. The other, far more formidable hurdle is her early- onset Alzheimer’s, whose symptoms are becoming increasingly debilitating everyday.
This is a highly entertaining story backed by vivid imagination and solid research. It all started with King mentioning to Chizmar in early 2017 “a story he’d started some time over the summer, and he just couldn’t finish it”. When Chizmar expressed interest in reading the unfinished manuscript, King sent it to him with these words: “Do whatever you want with it.”
It’s always fascinating to see how two established writers collaborate to create a seemingly seamless literary work. In this case, King and Chizmar each added their own content to the manuscript and sent it to the other, who would add some more words and then send it back.
“We did that until we were finished. Played ping-pong with emails. Neither one of us ever told the other where we wanted it to go or where we thought it might go,” said Chizmar. “It was pretty amazing and wonderful to see the respect [King] gave to the words I put on paper.”
Meanwhile, King is reported to have said: “I had a story I couldn’t finish, and [Chizmar] showed me the way home with style and panache.” What a humble statement from a highly successful and widely respected author!
This reviewer looks forward to reading Gwendy’s journeys in the previous instalments in The Gwendy Trilogy.
Note: This book review was originally titled “A mix of sci-fi and horror”.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 