Gwendy's Final Task

Published: 2022

Gwendy's Final Task (2022) concludes the trilogy that began with Gwendy's Button Box (2017) and continued with Gwendy's Magic Feather (2019). The story follows Gwendy Peterson, now 64 and a United States Senator, as she battles the early stages of Alzheimer's disease while undertaking a critical mission. Decades earlier, mysterious Richard Farris entrusted young Gwendy with a powerful button box—a device capable of delivering gifts but also catastrophic destruction if misused. Now, as humanity's first senator-astronaut aboard the privately funded space station Falcon 9, Gwendy must transport the dangerous button box beyond Earth to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. As her mental deterioration accelerates, Gwendy races against both her failing memory and sinister forces who want the box, including agents of the Crimson King from King's Dark Tower series. While in space, Gwendy experiences increasingly frequent episodes of confusion while being stalked by a mysterious figure aboard the station. The novel connects explicitly to King's larger multiverse, revealing the button box as a powerful object related to the Dark Tower itself, with Farris serving as an agent of the White in the eternal struggle against the Crimson King. Co-written with Richard Chizmar like the first volume (the middle book was written solely by Chizmar), the novel explores themes of memory, responsibility, and sacrifice through Gwendy's determination to complete her mission despite her deteriorating condition. The space station setting creates a claustrophobic atmosphere where Gwendy's internal battle against cognitive decline mirrors the external threats pursuing her across dimensions.

Themes

• Memory loss
• Responsibility
• Sacrifice
• Multiverse
• Mortality

Adaptations

Collector Notes

Concludes the Gwendy trilogy, co-written with Richard Chizmar. Explicitly connects to King's Dark Tower series, revealing the button box as an object of power within the larger multiverse.