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Asylum II - 13 More Tales of Terror
"Matt Drabble is a name that will one day be as widely recognized as Stephen King & Dean Koontz" - READERS FAVORITEWelcome back to Blackwater Heights, it's time to take another tour.After a breakout and a devastating fire, the private hospital is finally refurbished and opening its doors for business again.But the evil that has blighted this place runs deeper than the concrete foundations. Its very nature attracts darkness and now another storm is brewing.Some of the most disturbed minds sit within the padded walls of Blackwater Heights. 13 tales to tell and each is more shocking than the last.Dr Hilary Meeker is about to take up her position on the staff. An ambitious woman looking to make her mark and climb the professional ladder with little regard to those she steps upon.Dr Elgon Perrin runs the hospital, an unusual man with a unique style. But is he all that he seems? Are his methods too extreme? And is he more dangerous than the inmates that he stands guard over.Selected other works by Matt DrabbleABRA-CADAVER - The 2017 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction. Winner of a prestigious Indie Book of the Day Award, a 2015 Kindle Book Review Award Finalist and is the 2016 Book Excellence Awards winner for Horror Fiction. (FREE KINDLE version available)THE ASYLUM TRILOGY - an Amazon US Horror Chart #5 best seller, voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013, a 2014 Readers Favorite Gold Medal winner & the 2016 Readers Favorite Silver Medal winner for Anthology Fiction.THE LAST RESORT - The 2019 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction & The 2019 Kindle Book Review's Winner for Horror/Suspense.To find more Website: mattdrabble.co.ukTwitter: MattDrabble01Facebook: matt.drabble.3Instagram: mattdrabble01
- GenresHorror
442 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2015
26 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Matt Drabble
63 books244 followersBorn in Bath, England in 1974, a self-professed "funny onion", equal parts sport loving jock and comic book geek.
Awards & Achievements:
"ABRA-CADAVER" is the 2017 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction. It is also a 2015 Kindle Book Review Finalist, an Indie Book of the Day winner and the 2016 Book Excellence Award Winner for Horror Fiction.
"GATED" is the 2015 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner. It is also a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year.
"ASYLUM - 13 TALES OF TERROR" was a US Horror Chart #5. It was also voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & was the Readers Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner for Anthology Fiction.
"THE LAST RESORT" is the 2019 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction & The 2019 Kindle Book Review's Winner for Horror/Suspense
Visit me at www.mattdrabble.co.uk to download free short stories.
Twitter: MattDrabble01
Facebook: matt.drabble.3
Instagram: mattdrabble01
or to sign up for a newsletter: http://mad.ly/signups/95503/join
Awards & Achievements:
"ABRA-CADAVER" is the 2017 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction. It is also a 2015 Kindle Book Review Finalist, an Indie Book of the Day winner and the 2016 Book Excellence Award Winner for Horror Fiction.
"GATED" is the 2015 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner. It is also a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year.
"ASYLUM - 13 TALES OF TERROR" was a US Horror Chart #5. It was also voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & was the Readers Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner for Anthology Fiction.
"THE LAST RESORT" is the 2019 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction & The 2019 Kindle Book Review's Winner for Horror/Suspense
Visit me at www.mattdrabble.co.uk to download free short stories.
Twitter: MattDrabble01
Facebook: matt.drabble.3
Instagram: mattdrabble01
or to sign up for a newsletter: http://mad.ly/signups/95503/join
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 8, 2015
I'm not really a "fan-girl" kinda person. I mean, I have authors that I follow, even authors that I consider friends, but I am a fan of books in general, longing for my next great read, no matter who it is by. There are a handful (or two) of people, though, that I wait with breathless anticipation for their next book to come out, a handful (or two) of people I have been following long before I decided to take the step to become a book blogger.
Matt Drabble is one of those authors. Ever since 2013, when I read Abra-Cadaver, every time I hear he is coming out with a new book, I just have to have it. Fortunately, this is the second blog tour that he has done with Sage, and she knows how I feel about this author, so I received an email telling me she had a copy with my name on it and wanted to know what date I was game.
I was so excited to finally be able to sit down and open this book. And, as usual, he did not disappoint. Each book gets scarier and scarier - and I don't mean scary as in, right at this moment I am scared, but later on I forget all about it. I mean, scary now and, when I turn off the lights to go to sleep at night, I am just as freaked out ... and some times even more so, laying there, thoughts rushing through my mind, pretty sure I see a character or two of his hiding in the shadows of my apartment.
I love how each of these stories are a standalone, and yet, they all work together as cogs in the wheel of the bigger picture. There are twists, turns, frights, unexpected events, characters that you grow to love, ones that you despise from the first time you meet them ... and each story left me wanting more. My only complaint - which is my usual complaint with his books - is that they have to end, and I have to wait once again for him to give me something more from his imagination.
If you are a fan of horror, I definitely recommend you pick up one of the books by this author. He is well worth your time.
Matt Drabble is one of those authors. Ever since 2013, when I read Abra-Cadaver, every time I hear he is coming out with a new book, I just have to have it. Fortunately, this is the second blog tour that he has done with Sage, and she knows how I feel about this author, so I received an email telling me she had a copy with my name on it and wanted to know what date I was game.
I was so excited to finally be able to sit down and open this book. And, as usual, he did not disappoint. Each book gets scarier and scarier - and I don't mean scary as in, right at this moment I am scared, but later on I forget all about it. I mean, scary now and, when I turn off the lights to go to sleep at night, I am just as freaked out ... and some times even more so, laying there, thoughts rushing through my mind, pretty sure I see a character or two of his hiding in the shadows of my apartment.
I love how each of these stories are a standalone, and yet, they all work together as cogs in the wheel of the bigger picture. There are twists, turns, frights, unexpected events, characters that you grow to love, ones that you despise from the first time you meet them ... and each story left me wanting more. My only complaint - which is my usual complaint with his books - is that they have to end, and I have to wait once again for him to give me something more from his imagination.
If you are a fan of horror, I definitely recommend you pick up one of the books by this author. He is well worth your time.
November 15, 2017
Horror writer Matt Drabble goes back to a formula that served him well previously in Asylum II, a collection of loosely interconnected stories with the same framing device he used earlier in Asylum. This time, however, he appears to have gone back to the well once too often, and, although some of the tales in this collection are quite good, the overall effort is nowhere near as effective.
Asylum II is set at the same isolated mental hospital as the original Asylum was. Bad things happened there in the first book, and now a new psychiatrist, Dr. Hillary Meeker, is being sent to the institute. The book is written in the form of a series of chapters alternating between Hillary’s experiences at the hospital and 13 individual short stories that are related to her by various patients and, in some cases, staff, explaining how they wound up in the hospital. The tales run the gamut from science fiction to the supernatural to garden variety psychopaths on the loose. This book is considerably longer than the first “Asylum” was, and that additional length, both in the bridging story set at the asylum and some of the individual stories, proves to be its undoing.
Individually, many of the stories are quite good (I would certainly give a collection consisting of merely the 13 stories a four-star rating). One of my favorites is “That Voodoo That He Did So Well,” in which a shady land developer tries to run a voodoo priest out of a dilapidated building that represents the last piece needed for a major construction project. Needless to say, that proves to be a bad idea, since the priest doesn’t seem to want to stay dead. Another very good story is “Fancy Dress,” another tale of the supernatural, as a man gets revenge for the death of his high-school aged grandson who was driven to suicide by a group of school bullies. Come Halloween, the old man puts a curse on the costumes the bullies wear, forcing them to become the people (or creatures) they dress as.
None of the stories in Asylum II are real clunkers, but a few run on far too long, as if Drabble wasn’t sure how to end them and tried out several different things during the course of the story. The worst story in the collection is “Dead Man’s Hand,” in which the stakes in a poker game get progressively higher as one of the players has some odd powers. This one ends about three different times before Drabble settles on what is probably the weakest finish of all. “The Last Bus” is more science fiction than horror, and some readers may enjoy it, but most people will soon realize that it derives its plot (and twist ending) from a classic Twilight Zone episode.
Although a few of the individual stories in Asylum II run too long, the worst offender is the bridging story set at the institute. While most of the transitional chapters in the first Asylum were short, one of two pages as the protagonist went from one patient’s story to another,” here the transitional story is probably close to 100 pages all told and by far the weakest part of the book. Hillary goes around and around and around, trying to figure out just who her fellow doctors are and who the dangerous patients (or, worse, former doctors who are nuts themselves) are. The story is boring and confusing, with the gaps for individual stories making the overall plot more difficult to follow.
Overall, I still recommend Asylum II, although far more for the individual stories than for the book as a whole. It seems as if author Drabble lost sight of the interconnecting threads that made his first collection work so well and just pulled a group of manuscripts out of his desk and assembled them for this sequel. The book also shows the value a good editor brings. I’m not referring to the lack of copyediting of spelling and grammar that often gets criticized in Amazon reviews, but, rather, the value a good editor brings in fine tuning and excising excess verbiage from a book. Asylum II would have been a much better book at half the length, but it’s still worth a second visit to this institute.
Asylum II is set at the same isolated mental hospital as the original Asylum was. Bad things happened there in the first book, and now a new psychiatrist, Dr. Hillary Meeker, is being sent to the institute. The book is written in the form of a series of chapters alternating between Hillary’s experiences at the hospital and 13 individual short stories that are related to her by various patients and, in some cases, staff, explaining how they wound up in the hospital. The tales run the gamut from science fiction to the supernatural to garden variety psychopaths on the loose. This book is considerably longer than the first “Asylum” was, and that additional length, both in the bridging story set at the asylum and some of the individual stories, proves to be its undoing.
Individually, many of the stories are quite good (I would certainly give a collection consisting of merely the 13 stories a four-star rating). One of my favorites is “That Voodoo That He Did So Well,” in which a shady land developer tries to run a voodoo priest out of a dilapidated building that represents the last piece needed for a major construction project. Needless to say, that proves to be a bad idea, since the priest doesn’t seem to want to stay dead. Another very good story is “Fancy Dress,” another tale of the supernatural, as a man gets revenge for the death of his high-school aged grandson who was driven to suicide by a group of school bullies. Come Halloween, the old man puts a curse on the costumes the bullies wear, forcing them to become the people (or creatures) they dress as.
None of the stories in Asylum II are real clunkers, but a few run on far too long, as if Drabble wasn’t sure how to end them and tried out several different things during the course of the story. The worst story in the collection is “Dead Man’s Hand,” in which the stakes in a poker game get progressively higher as one of the players has some odd powers. This one ends about three different times before Drabble settles on what is probably the weakest finish of all. “The Last Bus” is more science fiction than horror, and some readers may enjoy it, but most people will soon realize that it derives its plot (and twist ending) from a classic Twilight Zone episode.
Although a few of the individual stories in Asylum II run too long, the worst offender is the bridging story set at the institute. While most of the transitional chapters in the first Asylum were short, one of two pages as the protagonist went from one patient’s story to another,” here the transitional story is probably close to 100 pages all told and by far the weakest part of the book. Hillary goes around and around and around, trying to figure out just who her fellow doctors are and who the dangerous patients (or, worse, former doctors who are nuts themselves) are. The story is boring and confusing, with the gaps for individual stories making the overall plot more difficult to follow.
Overall, I still recommend Asylum II, although far more for the individual stories than for the book as a whole. It seems as if author Drabble lost sight of the interconnecting threads that made his first collection work so well and just pulled a group of manuscripts out of his desk and assembled them for this sequel. The book also shows the value a good editor brings. I’m not referring to the lack of copyediting of spelling and grammar that often gets criticized in Amazon reviews, but, rather, the value a good editor brings in fine tuning and excising excess verbiage from a book. Asylum II would have been a much better book at half the length, but it’s still worth a second visit to this institute.
February 6, 2021
I really enjoyed the stories in the first first Asylum book and recommend it, but the overall story in that book just ended too abruptly for me and while that ending was predictable it would have been nice to get more information.
This book, the individual stories are even better and yes, the overall story is better but I still found it disappointing. I am usually the last person to be able to predict an ending but in this case I figured out (and wished I was wrong) how the ending was going to go. But that isn't the disappointing part; what I found disappointing was how the real Dr. Perrin was portrayed. I understand why he was portrayed that way - in order to confuse things - but once all was revealed his behavior is just baffling and I wished for some sort of explanation. I can't really say more than that without giving things away.
I did find the stories engaging and even though you knew they weren't going to end well (otherwise they wouldn't be patients in an asylum) they were intriguing enough to make you wonder how they were going to end. So I definitely would recommend this book. There were hints of the history of the building in the first book and it looks like the third may go into more detail on that so I'm looking forward to reading the third one.
This book, the individual stories are even better and yes, the overall story is better but I still found it disappointing. I am usually the last person to be able to predict an ending but in this case I figured out (and wished I was wrong) how the ending was going to go. But that isn't the disappointing part; what I found disappointing was how the real Dr. Perrin was portrayed. I understand why he was portrayed that way - in order to confuse things - but once all was revealed his behavior is just baffling and I wished for some sort of explanation. I can't really say more than that without giving things away.
I did find the stories engaging and even though you knew they weren't going to end well (otherwise they wouldn't be patients in an asylum) they were intriguing enough to make you wonder how they were going to end. So I definitely would recommend this book. There were hints of the history of the building in the first book and it looks like the third may go into more detail on that so I'm looking forward to reading the third one.
October 27, 2017
Outstanding! This book was so good, short stories with so many twist and turns keeping you on the edge of your seat. This is the kind of reading that gets you hooked right the start. Found this book was so hard to put down. Captivating reading. I highly recommend reading this book.
February 22, 2018
Great book!!!
Matt Drabble does it again. A great collection of short stories all contained amazingly within a much bigger tale. If you haven’t checked this guy out then you need to!!!
Matt Drabble does it again. A great collection of short stories all contained amazingly within a much bigger tale. If you haven’t checked this guy out then you need to!!!
January 26, 2026
Really Good Stories
Everyone of these stories had me hooked. Everyone was interesting exciting and totally different from the last.
I think a lot of work went into this book and it was worth it.
I do enjoy Matt’s books very much.
Everyone of these stories had me hooked. Everyone was interesting exciting and totally different from the last.
I think a lot of work went into this book and it was worth it.
I do enjoy Matt’s books very much.
September 30, 2019
Asylum #ll
Each story is as good as the last one! I had to keep reading till I finished the book. I'm now a fan of Matt Drabble and I'm hoping he keeps putting out books like this.
Each story is as good as the last one! I had to keep reading till I finished the book. I'm now a fan of Matt Drabble and I'm hoping he keeps putting out books like this.
February 21, 2017
Better Every Time!
I've been reading the works of Matt Drabble for years now and quite truly it feels as if each book he writes is better than the one before! I seldom give five star reviews as I am a firm believer in a person earning their outcomes and am a critical reader. Despite my high expectations to date this author has never left this reader anything but completely fulfilled after evoking a roller coaster of emotions that goes with any top notch novel that has proven it's artistry in any genre and Matt Drabble, in my opinion, is a true artist when it comes to the genre of horror.
I've been reading the works of Matt Drabble for years now and quite truly it feels as if each book he writes is better than the one before! I seldom give five star reviews as I am a firm believer in a person earning their outcomes and am a critical reader. Despite my high expectations to date this author has never left this reader anything but completely fulfilled after evoking a roller coaster of emotions that goes with any top notch novel that has proven it's artistry in any genre and Matt Drabble, in my opinion, is a true artist when it comes to the genre of horror.
March 5, 2016
Struggled to get through this and didn't enjoy it as much as the first collection. There are some good tales in here but also some weak ones plus one ridiculous story.
I also thought the ending was weak
I also thought the ending was weak
February 18, 2016
I sadly found myself to be very disappointed with this second installment, which is a shame because I loved the first one. For the most part however I found myself bored. out of all 13 tales there was only three that I really liked.
June 27, 2017
I preferred this book to the original 13 tales of terror. The stories were more interesting and unexpected. There was only 1 or 2 stories that I didn't like and skipped. The main plot with Dr Perrin kept me guessing as well, but it was a tad predictable.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews