It is of course no coincidence that Richard Farris bears the same initials as Randall Flagg aka The Man in Black. The question is whether, for the conclusion of his co-authored Gwendy trilogy (volume two was written by Richard Chizmar alone), Stephen King is not taking it easy on himself to combine the magic of the wish box with the mythology of the Black Tower, the Low Men in yellow cloaks and the classic mantra “there are other worlds but these,” that is, the world of that villain Randall Flagg.
King says his life is “always about the Dark Tower.” He works on it periodically. But there are now a lot of King novels with antagonists who want to collapse the beams of the tower and thus the tower itself, who want to let the world fall apart and thus let chaos reign. Farris wants to prevent that from happening and meets a third time with Gwendy Peterson, who we met in the first novel when she was 12 and is now 64. Reads confusing, also as an introduction to a review? Maybe that’s because this Gwendy finale is harder to understand if you’re not familiar with the seven, actually eight, strictly speaking nine “Dark Tower” books (if you want to include “Insomnia”).
The wish box is the friendly paraphrase of a tool from hell: Its buttons trigger global catastrophes, man-made or caused by nature, at the touch of a button, and at the same time fulfill the most impossible wishes of its owner. The link to Corona is applied a little too thickly and tries to be up-to-date; the virus also emerged here at the push of a button; by blaming a single person (who owned the Gwendy box and couldn’t resist the lure) for the advent of the virus rather than on the primal growths of civilization and its treatment of animals, all of humanity is also absolved.
The potential of the wish box is so epochal that King only knows how to counter it with the might of the toughest opponents. So the character brigade from the “Dark Tower”. But not only “The Dark Tower”, also the city of Derry and the alien Pennywise appear in the “final task”. So a bit much of everything. Perhaps King also wanted to fulfill a fan-service dream for his writer friend Richard Chizmar. Have him co-write a book that combines the two most popular King universes, It and The Dark Tower. And, with all due respect, King brings the symbol “darker than a raccoon’s asshole” for the third time.
Gwendy’s Last Task would have worked without the tower and a man-eating clown talking from the sewer. King and Chizmar present a start-to-finish novel that has become rare in its breathlessness for them about the attempt to create the wish box from – at least our – world by first taking a manned mission to a space station and from there into the depths of the… Alls is to be shot so that it no longer wreaks havoc on Earth (that an alien civilization receiving the container could suffer damage is tacitly accepted).
Gwendy Peterson has packed the diabolical cuboid well and wants to take her to deep space in a mini rocket without her fellow astronauts finding out about it. She has been part of the diabolical miracle for a long time. She is now a Democratic Senator, a mouthpiece for King, who can once again use this figure to voice his – justified – criticism of Tea Party Republicans: against abortion opponents, religious fundamentalists, NRA fanatics and Trump supporters.
Also on board is a multi-billionaire, like Gwendy officially a space tourist, but also on a secret mission: commissioned by the Low Men in Yellow, who want to bring down the Dark Tower by taking possession of the wish box. Gareth Winston embodies the Silicon Valley villain who is supposed to give the magic box to the beam breakers. Winston is presented as a competitor to the Musk and Bezos corporations SpaceX and Blue Origin, and he also works with a team of Chinese astronauts who are also in the All-Station and have been bribed by the magnate. So left (Musk, Bezos) and right (China) American enemy images are served here. In the past 20 years, Stephen King’s criticism has become increasingly direct; he just has to be careful that she doesn’t dictate his stories.
The punchline is that this super-rich Gareth Winston is lured by the Low Men in Yellow Coats with the promise of future ownership of an absurd fairyland world where a thousand virgins await, he owns slaves and gold mines, and an absolute ruler over be allowed to be a huge metropolis. Unrealistic? But who knows what else possessive-everything folks like Musk could dream of? Maybe of that. Gwendy, too, indulges in a certain amount of fraud. She leaves her fellow travelers in the dark about the true mission; she knows that as a politician she is used to telling a lie or two.
The wish box is the allegory of the addictive substance. Those who serve the box are rewarded, but can also perish from (material) greed and omnipotence; Gwendy’s punishment was that she developed Alzheimer’s disease. The vicious cycle is shown in the momentary improvement in their memory, controlled by the chocolate that the machine spits out, but which at the same time creates a greater dependency on evil.
Above all, “Gwendy’s Last Task” is a story about the belief in a higher power, which – as the Apollo astronauts can also report – grows with every further step into space. Gwendy’s ally, the CIA boss, believes her; a physicist on board the space station doesn’t believe her, and for that he doesn’t manage to operate the box. “How can anyone look at this sea of lights,” says Gwendy, “and think life is anything but a palace of mystery and wonder?” Gwendy believes in life after death, which will help her in her final task.
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