Books: Gwendy's Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (2022)

"When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction. Years later, the button box entered Gwendy’s life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented. Now, evil forces seek to possess the button box and it is up to Senator Gwendy Peterson to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities"

Towards the end of this novel, I got the sense that the original tale, Gwendy’s Button Box, started out as a simple novella, a Twilight Zone style story with it’s morality tale and twist ending, with no need for a real explanation, that ballooned into something more with Gwendy’s Magic Feather and now Gwendy’s Final Task. That the only way it can, could, end is with a deus ex machina style explanation. The fact that King and Chizmar make note of this, is telling. Also, by tying a lot of the story to King’s Dark Tower universe will either make nerdy fans happy or piss them off for doing this.

Gwendy’s Button Box was tight little novella that left you wondering, but not really demanding an explanation. Was Richard Farris the legendary Man in Black? What was the button box to begin with, who made it, where did come from and why did Farris trust Gwendy the most to keep it safe? These were elements of the first tale, but again, did we really need these answered?

With Gwendy’s Magic Feather, the tale leaped into the future and started to take leaps and bounds with logic, and while the idea Gwendy is a politician, it took the simple premise that lead us away from Castle Rock into space (which often reminded me of Moonraker, the James Bond film that took 007 to space, if only because a little film named Star Wars demanded it). And since 90 year-old William Shatner went into orbit via Blue Origin, the idea of a 64 year-old sitting Senator traveling to an orbiting space station is not that farfetched, but…the ending of the button box is set in space?

There are many worlds than these, as Dark Tower fans know, and I’m also curious which one of the twelve this one is set in. The second book, set in 1999, featured a fictitious president, but in the last book Trump gets several mentions as well as COVID-19 (the book is set in 2026, and the coronavirus is still present). As anyone would know, King is not a fan of Trump, but it’s still startling to see him part of this tale, when the rest seemed to be set in different world than ours.

Of course, we are left with a few mysteries, such as who is Bobby and why he called Richard Farris a “meddler.” Perhaps this Bobby is just another of the Low Men in Yellow Coats working with someone else, something else, to bring down the beams and the Tower still, as the button box is the “only one thing can destroy it, now that the Crimson King is dead.”

In the end, I enjoyed these two novellas and novel about Gwendy Peterson. As with many King characters, she’s three dimensional, smart, intelligent, but flawed. She represents the best of humanity when confronted with the ability to save or destroy a world.

Books: Gwendy's Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar (2019)

"Something evil has swept into the small western Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls, but time is running out to bring them home alive. In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrusted or some might say cursed with the extraordinary button box by Richard Farris, the mysterious stranger in the black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care and feeding until Farris eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again. One day, though, the button box shows up without warning and without Richard Farris to explain why, or what she's supposed to do with it. The mysterious reappearance of the box, along with the troubling disappearances in Castle Rock, leads Gwendy home again...where she just might be able to help rescue the missing girls and stop a madman before he does something ghastly."

As Stephen King notes is his forward to this short novel, when he was contacted by friend, writer, publisher Richard Chizmar, if there was a chance of them collaborating on something, the tale of Gwendy Peterson was already on King’s computer, an idea that dried up after a promising start. But they worked together to finish the story, and Gwendy’s Button Box was released in 2017. Chizmar thought that Gwendy’s story could continue, but as King noted. “I was interested, but not entirely convinced.” It’s when Chizmar suggested moving the story forward, having Gwendy an adult and a Congresswoman from Maine, did King see the potential. “Gwendy’s position of power,” he writes, "in the political machinery echoed the button box. I told him that it sounded fine, and he should go ahead.”

Gwendy’s Magic Feather is just as good as the first book, spotlighting a lot what makes King’s books work, the comings and goings of small towns. The book again returns to Castle Rock, which like Derry, is a legendary town with dark secrets. Still, a lot of short novel plays out like a morality play about choices we make and the price that comes with those choices –especially when Gwendy is confronted by her desire to see her husband (a photo-journalist on assignment in war torn Timor) and her cancer stricken mother. But in the background, as always with Castle Rock, something is stalking young girls and Gwendy may hold the key –or button box- to solve it.

I think Chizmar prose works well here, keeping the pages turning with short chapters and well established characters. The clues are there to discover who the Tooth Fairy is, but that’s really on secondary to Gwendy’s dilemma the button box proposes. The magic feather, when it pops up late in the book, seems a bit random, but you then realize that box, the feather and the mysterious Richard Farris are all connected.

Books: Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (2017)

Stephen King and Richard Chizmar venture back to the little town of Castle Rock, Maine, the setting of many early King novels, for this novella. 

“There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside. At the top of the stairs, Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground. From a bit farther away comes the chink of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball as the Senior League kids practice for the Labor Day charity game.  One day, a stranger calls to Gwendy:  ‘Hey, girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.’  On a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat like for a suit, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat...”

While King left Castle Rock after he published NEEDFUL THINGS, as always with this author, we know that certain places, Derry in particular, never are far away. This novella, published in book form by Cemetery Dance Publications reads like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. A young girl is given a mysterious box with buttons on it. These buttons are powerful and very dangerous. But they also offer a life altering treat for Gwendy, and as her life is changed by possessing the box, she is also tempted by the mysterious power it does posses. 

The ultimate question is if you had the power to destroy, could you wield it? But temptation is strong, and while Gwendy takes her responsibility of safekeeping the box, she will succumb to the darkness that is emitted from it.

This is not a scary novella, but more fast-paced a thriller (read it in 90 minutes) with psychological overtones that King has employed over the last two decades. I’ve never read anything by Chizmar, so it’s hard for me to pass comment on his style. But beyond the setting of Castle Rock, it appears The Man in Black is still around –the tale is set between 1974 and 1984- so another alternate world. He goes by Richard Farris (another recurring theme, with the character’s name always –or mostly- having the same initials) here and seems more human than malevolent.

A great story to wield away a Saturday afternoon!