gilda_elise

When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a 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 coloured buttons promised death and destruction.

Years later, the button box re-entered Gwendy's life. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once more forced to deal with the temptations that the box represented—an amazing sense of wellbeing, balanced by a terrifyingly dark urge towards disaster.

With the passing of time, the box has grown ever stronger and evil forces are striving to possess it. Once again, it is up to Gwendy Peterson, now a United States Senator battling the early symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities?

Gwendy's Final Task is a wildly suspenseful and at the same time deeply moving novel in which 'horror giants' (Publishers Weekly) Stephen King and Richard Chizmar take us on a journey from Castle Rock to another famous cursed Maine city to the MF-1 space station, where Gwendy must execute a secret mission to save the world. And, maybe, all worlds.

I didn’t like the book as much as the first (Gwendy’s Button Box,) but I definitely liked it more than the second (Gwendy’s Magic Feather.) Which maybe goes to show that not all authors are a good combination. It would be interesting to find out how much of each book was written by which author. I have my suspicions.

The book is more science fiction than horror, which is fine, since that was the direction the series seem to be taking in the second book. The other direction they seem to have taken is away from King’s every-man characters. Gwendy started out that way in the first book, but then is a Representative in the second, and a Senator, best-selling author, and astronaut in the third! Just a bit incredulous.

But the book is an easy read, though short for a King novel. And there were some characters I liked, like Adesh Patel, the entomologist, and his pet scorpion, Boris.So I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the book, just not as much as I had hoped I would.