Day 768, Quasi-Quarantine: "Gwendy's Final Task" Serves As Functional Close To Unexpected Trilogy

"Life in America, Gwendy thought when she contemplated all those Magowan votes. Life in pandemic America." 

"Gwendy's Final Task" features a frantic pace, more overt tie-ins to the Dark Tower, and a satisfying conclusion to a trilogy. Based on the relative thinness of the story itself, it's hard to ask much more of Stephen King and Richard Chizmar in this one.

The suspension of disbelief is real, but that is true of most all of King's books. For a trilogy that started as little more than a short story, this one progresses slowly, but the emergence of Derry as a secondary character brings back old the old melancholy and terror.

" ... But she's looking at the stars. Oh they are gorgeous and how can anyone look at that spill of light and believe life is anything but a hall of mysteries?"

I liked artist Keith Minnion's interior illustrations, but thought more could have been extracted from them to reinforce the story. You can also see King ceding more of the ownership to Chizmar, and while that's never a good thing (it's a bit more tidily concluded than most of King's works), it's a worthy finale.

"The words suddenly slip into his head unbidden. Mr. Peterson has no idea where they came from or what they mean, but he likes the sound of them so much he says them out loud: 'There are other worlds than these.' Sitting there, staring up at the infinite darkness, he thinks they are easy words to believe."