“Wanting to know things and do things is what the human race is all about. Exploration, Gwendy! Both the disease and the cure!”

Rating: 3.5 stars

I follow Richard Chizmar on twitter and I heard a lot about Gwendy's Magic Feather around release date. So when I saw Button Box on the quick choices stand at my library, I had to pick it up. This is a quick read. I'm a particularly fast reader, so I actually read the whole thing on my lunch break at work, but I imagine for most people it would be 2.5 - 3 hours of reading. It's definitely worth picking up, though. The idea is that 12 year old Gwendy has been given a magical button box. It has a button for each continent, and the box gives her great, great benefits but also HUGE responsibilities. The novella explores the control that the box has over her life, and to me also seemed to have an interesting focus on the implications of agreeing to responsibilities without knowing the true implications. I wouldn't say this novella is particularly scary, but I would say that it's definitely a fascinating character study.

Next, I've gotta get my hands on a copy of Magic Feather and revisit a grown up Gwendy.