#beyond the starry gate

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 13

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Once, the grocery store run by the Malik family had been like any other in the city, a small, tidy shop on a Whitechapel corner selling milk, papers, cigarettes, packets of dried pasta and as good a stock of fruits and vegetables as could be expected in the East End. Haunted, yes, but so were many old buildings in London, the paint and fluorescent lights never enough to exorcise the memories soaked into the very stone and brick, the blood dried beneath the floorboards.

Helena & co retread footsteps and awaken some very old ghosts! Did I have to consult the first book way too often to remember details of this location?? Yes of course I did!!!!!

Side note I am actually obsessed with the tragic, flawed love story of Alistair and Rebecca Blackwood, help me, they are true undying romance to me, here's their playlist:

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 9

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Quickly, they arranged the room- table, chairs, the candle, placed in the center of the séance table, a single pillar of pale light. Its flame spat, wavered as Helena unsheathed the Board from its case, revealing its glossy surface to the sterile air. Sami’s eyes went from Miranda, to the Board, to Miranda again as he sat in his chair, nothing else of him moving save for the ceaseless pick, pick, pick of his nails against a hole in his trousers, worrying at the fabric.

Matty WILL catch a break! Will it be today? No!

The idea of resurrection is really interesting to me- the memory of dying haunting everything you do. Out of the 3 Blackwood gang members, Helena is the only one who *hasn't* actually fully died...

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 11

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It’s been waiting so long. Longer than the world has spun. An abyss of time. I saw it, and I screamed and screamed, and it still could not drown out the horror. It was waiting all that time for us, you see. Because we’re hers. We’re Rebecca’s. It’s hated her as long as it’s been trapped. Countless lifetimes of hate. And it can’t have her anymore.

Ok I couldn't wait to post this one! I think it's best this one is read with the previous one, without much delay!!

I have been waiting for the events of this chapter for [redacted] years. YEARS!!

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 7

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Dreams, visions, visions of other worlds, other places, other realms. No people in them- was that what had given Fowley-Shaw such fervor, such an obsession? Did he dream himself in these places, the solitary lord of these nowhere-lands, drifting lonely through the silent mountains? Did he see himself as ruler, conqueror, or was he comforted by the keen of wind through barren mountains, the stirring of breath that belonged to only him?

Helena and Sami dig deeper, while Matty climbs higher.

I do think the Bellwethers have probably the healthiest romance in these books, period. Like, they may be questionable people but they would 'he said no pickles' for one another until the end of time

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 12

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“Where? Where did you go?” “I don’t know, exactly…” He trailed away. The village fell behind them, swallowed by the rain, and now they were surrounded by fields again, oceans of grass, the night stretching on endlessly. “It was...somewhere else,” he said at last. “Somewhere far away. Further than anything. It was a wasteland, black stone mountains, deserts filled with ruins. No sun. No light. Just the stars. I thought they were stars, anyway. They were different. They burned my eyes if I looked at them too long.”

LOOK WHO'S BACK IN TOWN!!!

If you enjoy this series, and in particular this volume, I highly recommend This early piece of paranormal investigator fiction- I didn't actually read it until like last year, but let's just call it a retroactive influence on the series!

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Blackwood Books #4- BEYOND THE STARRY GATE

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Mrs. Benitez’s wails faded, becoming gulps, sniffs, her hands pressed over her mouth. “Will God not help us?” she managed. “Not today,” Helena said. She reached for her tape recorder and pressed stop. The tape spun down, whirring to a halt. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

The First Three Chapters! Oh boy oh boy!!!

Synopsis:

May, 1975. Helena Blackwood has left England behind in search of answers: to the endgame of the dangerous cult that nearly killed her, to the true fate of her long-vanished twin brother, to the psychic forces that lurk beyond the rim of human understanding. But misfortune is not so easy to shake, and her worst fears prove hardest of all: Matty St Clair is losing his mind, and there's nothing she can do to save him.

An unlikely source offers her a last desperate hope: a job, an investigation that goes against her deepest principles, that threatens to lose everything she's longed for. As a strange comet arcs through the sky, as secrets are unearthed from a half-drowned house once owned by a mad occultist, Helena must decide who she really is, and to what lengths she'll go to save what she holds most dear.

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 4

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“I won’t have your insolence,” Bellwether said. His eyes shone, dark and cold. “Your insouciance. You may have operated so in the past. No longer, not here. This is no shallow matter. I need you, Blackwood, I will not deny it. Your talents, your experience, your...unique perspective, shall we say, on recent matters. Your connection to the Malik boy, too, cannot be discounted. But I won’t hesitate to destroy you both, if you prove more trouble than you’re worth.”

Helena is placed between the devil and the deep blue sea. she doesn't like the climate in Hell, and she never learned to swim.

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Beyond the Starry Gate- Chapter 14

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Sami’s hand closed around Toby’s, jerking him to a halt. “Stop,” Sami whispered. “Both of you. Stop. Shut up.” Helena shut up. So did Toby. In the rush of silence, echoes fanned away and away around them. Then- a spike of cold shot down Helena’s nerves, her pulse at once rabbit-fast. Something howled through the fog, a querulous, high-pitched mewl. It rang from somewhere to Helena’s left, impossible to tell if it was meters away or miles.

Back to the belly of the beast~

I really enjoy the surreal environments of a lot of early cosmic/gothic horror, especially that of Algernon Blackwood, who is a fairly obvious influence on this series. The sense of a place being as much a threat as a more tangible entity. of course, here we have both! AND the damn car won't go through the mud!