Gwendy's Final Task

 

Gwendy’s Final Task – Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Bad News, Good News, Bad News.  The Bad News is it is the consensus that even though Stephen King is considered one of the most popular authors during the last 50 years, he’s written some pretty awful books. The Good News is, for me at least, he’s had a pretty good streak going as of late, and I haven’t read anything too awful by him for quite some time. The Bad News is that this one, sadly, breaks the winning streak.  This offering was pretty bad on so many levels.

First, this is a sequel.  Actually I think it’s part 3 of a trilogy, yet part 2 was written by co-author Richard Chizmar as a solo effort, so I never made the effort to tackle that one.  Part 1 was actually a decent effort. It was somewhat brief, and could have easily been a novella instead of a standalone book that costs the reader $25 or $30.  That story was somewhat entertaining.  Part of the problem, for me anyway, is that I really didn’t remember much about the first book.  Something about a little girl who is given a “mysterious magical box” by a “mysterious stranger in a bowler hat”.  The magic box allows little Gwendy Peterson to do some pretty neat magical things, but with all good things, there are bad things attached. I think. I honestly don’t remember too many details, and I don’t really remember Stephen King doing a decent job in this novel reminding his readers of the exact reasoning behind the box and why Gwendy wanted to use it in the first place. Strike 1.

So fast forward several years.  I think we’re now in 2026. The book was written in 2022, so we’re in the “future” but if you pick this book up several years after it was written, you may not be aware of the fact that the story takes place in a hypothetical forthcoming time.  So some events we read about actually happened, such as the COVID pandemic.  Other events, like the Great Pyramids of Egypt exploding (or something) probably (let’s hope) won’t actually occur. So if one picks this book up in, say, 2028, they may be a tad confused by the “reality” that surrounds them in this book. Strike 2.

Gwendy is now a 64-year-old Senator.  Since our main character holds such a prestigious occupation in the world of American politics, this gives Stephen King his familiar, yet annoying, opportunity to espouse his annoying political opinions ad nauseum.  This isn’t the first time he’s done this, and it sadly won’t be the last.  Being political isn’t a bad thing in a book as long as you bottle the acid and tame the venom to a degree.  I recently read another fairly new King novel, “Billy Summers”, and in that book, King takes aim at Donald Trump about once every 75 pages or so.  In this book, however, King barfs up his opinions every other page it seems.  Like the author, I despise the 45^th President, yet such musings are not welcome when the man dictates his opinions in such a forced condescending way throughout the entire book.  If King ever truly wants to convert the ignorant Trump supporter, his methods in his writing simply won’t get the job done.

So when we read about Gwendy in her bid for the Senate against her Trump worshipping opponent, all of the annoying stereotypes bludgeon the reader over the head.  She campaigns with a mask.  Her opponent, of course, does not.  Of course it’s a conservative district, and of course Gwendy doesn’t have any chance of winning - especially when her opponent is a leader of his prestigious church (of course). Well, of course he has an affair with a young member of the congregation. Of course he then gets her pregnant. And of course he tries to secretly obtain an abortion. And of course he’s discovered, and of course it makes the national news. And of course this sinks his campaign allowing Gwendy to, of course, win the Senate seat.

Of course it does.

Strike 3.

Now, not to confuse you, but this little story takes place in the “past” during our story.  The “present” involves the well-known Senator Gwendy Peterson getting to go to Space with an astronaut crew.  Her main motive is to get rid of the magic box and the evil that it contains.  What better place to get rid of it than somewhere other than the planet Earth?  So our main story takes place on a space shuttle where Gwendy is surrounded by astronauts who all have specific duties, but, hey, it’s great publicity to allow an esteemed Senator to go along for the ride.  There’s another “non-astronaut” as well - some mega rich billionaire who is the epitome of a rich, white, Republican male.  So of course, Gwendy can’t stand the guy and every time we read a dialogue between these two characters, it’s quite painful since King goes out of his way to not allow a single, decent thing come out of such a monster’s mouth. So this unbelievable character serves no purpose other than to allow King to scratch his hateful itch towards such a stereotype.  Actually, the character DOES serve a purpose to the story, but the events that actually happen here are quite dumb.  Strike 4 (and Strike 5 as well).

If things in this hackneyed story don’t seem to get any worse, they sadly do. It seems as though Gwendy is in the first stages of Alzheimer’s, and she seems to be forgetting a lot of things. Whether or not this condition is due to the evil box, I’m not quite sure, but, oh boy, King never fails to remind us that Gwendy’s mind is deteriorating.  You want to metaphorically grab the author by the neck and scream “We get it! You don’t have to remind us every other friggin paragraph!”.    So we read something like “Gwendy reaches down to tie her shoes”.  But, then, Gwendy can’t remember how to tie her shoes. So King spends several paragraphs elaborating on this fact.  Oy.  Strike 6.

I should also point out that in addition to reading the other (two?) book(s) in the series, Stephen King also has a bad habit of including happenings from his other novels in his current story as well.  This might be kinda cool for someone who’s read every Stephen King book a multitude of times, but one wishes that the author be reminded that not everyone who picks up this book is familiar with the plots of novels such as “It” or any of the books in the Dark Tower series.  Strike 6. No wait….I mean Strike 7.

This book was a waste of time and a waste of money.  The first book in the series was good, but this one seems nothing other than trying to exploit that story and turn it into a worthless rant that we’ve all heard before.  It’s sad that the reader must endure this kind of tripe from King every few years are so. Especially when he’s capable of so much better.