By Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Hodder, out now

Gwendy thought she knew how her life would end…

The concluding part of King and Chizmar’s Gwendy trilogy will speak especially to the many thousands of readers who are of an age to have either directly or vicariously experienced the true horror of incipient dementia – the feeling that you are not quite in control of your own faculties, and parts of your life that you’ve relied on so heavily for decades are no longer the reliable posts that they were. It’s hard to experience (and to understand that you are experiencing it – denial is such a large part of this because it is such a fundamental change) and hard to watch, as the person you knew becomes something different.

And it’s much worse when you have something that can change the fate of the world in your care and you can’t remember where you put the damn thing!

The years between Chizmar’s second book and this finale are filled in such as we need to understand how Gwendy has reached the position that allows her to get herself on board the space mission, and the coping mechanisms that she’s established to maintain the façade. We also learn where the magic box may have affected our own lives and there’s no doubt that what she intends to do is the right thing, something she has been brought up to do all her life… But she, and we as readers, know how the story ends. Or so we think.

King and Chizmar keep you engaged throughout the novel (although I would strongly advise going back and reading the previous two – this really isn’t a standalone) and there’s a lovely feel of a classic 1970s movie about the ending as well as a shoutout to more than one of the recurring themes of King’s work since that time.

Verdict: A truly appropriate ending to an unusual trilogy. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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