Andreya's Asylum

My awesome friend gave me her (gorgeous) copy of Thunderstorm's Private Reserve signed/limited edition hardcover for Christmas and I love it more than when I first saw the cover. I had not read anything by Matthew Warner before and with so many books in my never-ending "to be read" pile, it was put on my book shelf and remained eye candy until this week when curiosity won out and I picked it up.

I typically go into a book with some sort of expectations, my own or from the word of mouth of others. With Dominoes in Time, I had none, and perhaps that is one of the reasons I enjoyed it so completely. I can honestly say it is one of the few anthologies that I have read where I liked every single story. I'm not going to go through and give you mini-summaries of all of the stories, but I will give you a table of contents:

Foreword

AIN’T IT ROMANTIC?
Picture Perfect
Muralistic
At Death We’ll Not Part
Springs Eternal
Cocktail Party of the Dead
Life Insurance

THE JOY OF PARENTHOOD
Cat’s Cradle
Second Wind
With the Eyes of God
Maybe Monitored
It’s Just Business
The Three Golden Eggs

INTERMISSION
And That’s When the Bathroom Exploded

LOOKING BACK
Backwards Man
Bummers
Monarch of the Mountains

LOOKING FORWARD
Noah’s Temple
Die Not in Vain

Story Notes

My favorite stories are: At Death We'll Not Part, Cat's Cradle, Second Wind, Noah's Temple and Die Not in Vain. At Death We'll Not Part makes you realize that there are worse things than dying. Cat's Cradle still creeps the crap out of me when I think about it. Second Wind was both fascinating and heartbreaking. Noah's Temple, my absolute favorite story in the book, is just brilliant and I would happily read a sequel to this. Matthew Warner has exceptional attention to detail and this story fell into place perfectly. Die Not in Vain has the best airplane description I have ever read. I hate flying and Warner managed to encapsulate the feeling of every nerve in my body during a flight. The rest of the story is equally gripping and disturbing. They can't all be my favorite but they were all worth reading and I would do so again.

My first instinct is to go out and buy everything I can find by Matthew Warner, because all I want is more. My second is to tell you to do the same. To say that this man can write is an understatement. His prose is brilliant, witty, and unabashedly his own.

© 2016 by Andi Rawson of Andreya's Asylum