Book Review: Gwendy's Magic Feather

  By Richard Chizmar

• Pub Date: 2019

• Where I bought this book: Household Books,  Cincinnati. 

• Why I bought this book: I found this really cool, locally owned bookstore in my hometown, and felt I had to buy something. This was it.

 ******

    So, I had read the first and third installments of this trilogy because Stephen King co-wrote those two. Both were good stories, well told. 

    My review of Gwendy's Button Box is here, and Gwendy's Final Task is here.

    I really did not intend to read this middle chapter, because it wasn't essential, and I was unfamiliar with the author. But when I found it in this well-curated bookstore that was part of an under-served neighborhood near mine, well, I had to support it.

    It's nice. Well written. It fits in well to the overall story. It fleshes out the details of Gwendy Peterson, the girl we met as a young teen-ager when a strange man gives her this mysterious, other-worldly button box, who is now a young U.S. Congresswoman from Maine. The button box gives rewards, can cause real pain -- up to and including Armageddon -- and has a strange pull on those who watch over it.

    It's a King creation, through and through. But as King notes in his forward, Chizmar saved the first book from oblivion, and wrote a large role in the third. On his own in the second, Chizmar does a workman-like job, giving Wendy another opportunity to do well. 

    Gwendy becomes what we expected in book one. She's the same person, only older and wiser. But the writing and story have the same flaws as the other two books: Some long-winded, drawn out, unnecessarily long scenes, lots of tropes, and filler (see, it's not just King who does all that). 

    But overall, it's a decent read.