I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Gatepost by Tim Weed Published by Podium Publishing on May 26 2026
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 264
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A mysterious ancient artifact is the centerpiece of this well written, carefully researched and plotted story, perfect for readers who love scholarly mysteries.
The Gatepost is another excellent story by Tim Weed, whose last book, The Afterlife Project, was one of my favorite books from last year. The Gatepost didn’t hit quite as hard as The Afterlife Project, since it lacked the incredible sense of awe I felt while reading that book. Still, I was transfixed by Weed’s ideas and his ability to meld science, spirituality and mystery into a top notch tale. There’s a bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark to this story, and the multiple points of view, dual timelines and flashback scenes were masterfully woven together into a cohesive and exciting reading experience.
The story follows three main points of view. Esme Weatherhead is in her early thirties and has recently left her old life behind to pursue a personal project. Her father, Gregory Weatherhead, disappeared twenty years earlier after walking into the forest on their rural Vermont property. His disappearance was never solved—Esme was twelve at the time and she’s been trying to deal with the trauma ever since. She’s decided to write a book about her father’s life—he wrote a bestseller about Indigenous shamanic practices and hallucinogenic experiences—and she’s come back to the family farm, Woodgate, to work on the book and see if she can finally figure out what happened to him.
We also meet Lucas St. Pierre, a down-on-his-luck geologist who is barely scraping by with the occasional consulting job. One day he gets an email from a woman who wants to hire him to help her find a cave on her property. When he meets Esme, he’s struck by her beauty, but also by her tenacity to find the cave, which she believes is connected to her father’s disappearance.
And finally, we follow Gregory Weatherhead himself, who appears to be lost in a world he calls “Graniteworld,” a stark, unfamiliar place that he found himself in after performing a Shamanistic ritual involving hallucinogenic mushrooms. Gregory’s chapters are the biggest mystery of the story. Is he tripping on mushrooms and hallucinating? Is he dead? Or did he actually travel to an alternate world? Readers will get some answers, but not until the end of the story.
A fourth point of view is introduced eventually, a rich collector of rare artifacts named Sebastian Bonney who has ties to both Gregory and Esme and eventually Lucas. Sebastian acts as the villain of the story, as he is trying to get his hands on an ancient relic that doesn’t belong to him.
The story focuses on Esme and Lucas and what they find inside the cave, and for me, these were my favorite parts. In order to understand the object in the cave, the author takes readers back to Gregory’s days working on his PhD thesis, his time in Oaxaca, Mexico, and a spiritualist he meets there who will change his life forever. This is a sweeping tale that incorporates Gregory’s studies in Zapotec culture, Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, and alternate realities. It’s also a well developed mystery as Esme and Lucas try to discover the connection between Gregory’s disappearance and the cave.
Weed throws in a romance between Esme and Lucas, which didn’t surprise me at all, and I thought it worked really well. There are some interesting side characters who flesh out the story, like Esme’s mother Silvana, who lives in Oaxaca and comes to visit occasionally, Lucas’s fifteen year old daughter Ava, and Zoraida, the shaman who sets Gregory on his path to save humanity. Despite its low page count, this isn’t a quick read, but that’s not a negative. I found myself savoring each page and each new fact and revelation, the slow unveiling of the different mysteries, and I loved getting to know the character’s backstories.
My only complaint is that I wasn’t convinced by some of the choices the characters made. For example, Esme keeps seeing a drone flying over her property but doesn’t worry much about it. At one point Lucas is offered a “seems too good to be true” job and goes along with it anyway, even when he realizes some of the details are extremely sketchy. Lucas also makes a particular choice late in the story that had me shaking my head in frustration, and it didn’t add anything to the story except to make Lucas look bad.
The last section veers into thriller territory, as all the various parts of the story come together, and I loved the way Esme finally gets some closure about her father’s demise. We do get to see what happened to Gregory—sort of—although with the haze of magic mushrooms hanging over his strange experiences, it’s ultimately left up to the reader to interpret the events. A feel-good, satisfactory ending wraps everything up. Tim Weed is an author who deserves wider attention, so if you haven’t tried his books yet, The Gatepost is a great place to start.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
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