You've read it before in various forms, a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fantasy, one of thousands that can trace their ancestry back to "The Monkey's Paw". King and Chizmar revitalize it as a Young Adult cautionary fable.....with an unhappy, overweight twelve year old , Gwendy Peterson, given a mysterious box by an equally mysterious, other-worldly guy with a funny black hat......
The box comes armed with buttons that when pushed, can destroy continents or, if you prefer, anything or anyone you might want destroyed in general....(if King truly desired to horrify us, he'd have written a story where Trump gets hold of this box....)
For extra bonuses, as if continent-destroying wasn't enough of a perk, the box dispenses priceless rare coins and tiny chocolates that not only reduce Gwendy's weight, but make her teen years infinitely better....
But remember this is a Stephen King story we're talking about.....so along come two of his patented familiar characters.....a vicious, hateful villain, someone to freely loathe and fear.....and King's official Sacrificial Lamb, a wonderfully warm, caring human being destined for a terrible, violent death...even in a story this brief, the Master finds a way to fit them in....
We're huge King-philes here at the BQ, and while the story's finale isn't quite the King barn-burner you'd expect, we smiled with admiration at King and Chizmar's metaphor for the button box. It's a satisfactory and comfortably warm wrap up....(it might have made a perfect two part entry in Steven Spielberg's old "Amazing Stories" TV show).....just don't expect to get your feet pulled out from under you. Expect a dark-and-light fairy tale spun by two skillful storytellers. We'll push 3 buttons for "Gwendy" (***)......as for the box's red button (the one that can take out anything you want)...we know who we'd think of when pushing that one....
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