Mirrormaze: A Dreampunk Anthology by Cliff Jones Jr.

Mirrormaze: A Dreampunk Anthology Reviews

• 
  Jennifer

  Finally, a fantastic book filled with truly wonderful dreampunk stories. Described as a 'nascent genre', Dreampunk has all the elements I could ever want and more. It's extremely difficult to spotlight specific stories in this collection because each and every one of them is so good, but I will choose a top six:
  
  "Origin"
  "Alice Under Marmalade Skies"
  "Thatcher Maugden and the Dream Witch"
  "Visual Snow"
  "The Mirror Cracked"
  "Angel in the Cave"
  
  Honestly, every story shines in its own right and I have no complaints about any of them.
  
  The "choose your own dream adventure" style of navigation while reading the book is really fun and clever, invoking feelings of being in an actual maze as you read. I fought against my urge to read the stories in order and followed the prompts instead and I'm very glad I did.
  
  Five stars, definitely. Awesome cover art and stories of speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and even some horror all with the common theme of dreams and the subconscious. I highly recommend it, especially if you've never heard of the genre and are intrigued by it. I will be seeking more works by these authors.
• 
  Sonya Deulina

  I really loved this anthology. I liked how after a story ended, the narrator guided you to choose the next, like a choose your own adventure book! So many different voices and trippy, atmospheric settings. It definitely helped me forget about the craziness of reality for a while. A great read and escape!
• 
  Claire

  My review is only for L.B. Shimaira's short story in this anthology, as it's the only one I've read. But I want to read the rest when I get my hands on this!
  
  Shimaira's story is about visual snow, an actual medical condition - but it takes a fantastical, spooky turn. I hadn't heard of visual snow and I imagine a lot of readers won't have, either, so this story does a great job educating people about the condition. Thankfully, in real life, I'm pretty sure it doesn't take the turn that it does in this story...which is very eerie and nicely done.
• 
  ellis van wyk

  A deliciously eclectic collection of interconnected stories. Each one is so passionate and wild, and the veins of the related themes that wind into all of the chapters is amazing and supremely well done. A visual journey for the written word!
• 
  Matt Watters

  Mirrormaze – A Dreampunk Anthology by Cliff Jones Jr & Co has been my favourite read this year. I love the structure of the book, with cues to guide you through the maze. The stories come in varied flavours, but always laced with that central dream theme.
  
  There are standout stories that I found very intriguing in their structure and content, but I won’t give you any spoilers and influence your choices, you have to decide your own favourites. The stories are very well written, entertaining, they make you think and with 29 stories, there are many perspectives of what a ‘dream’ means.
  
  It took me a few weeks to work my way through the maze, like many of you, I’m time poor. So, I’d jump into the maze every time I had some free time. That’s why I love short story anthologies so much, you can read a few, be swept away to an imagined time and place, fall back to reality, until it’s time to ‘dream awake’ again when you open the book or device.
  
  I highly recommend Mirrormaze – A Dreampunk Anthology to all readers, because everyone dreams, so everyone can relate to the fascinating journey dreams take us on.
• 
  Elias Pell

  An awesome anthology of short stories from an incredibly talented collective of authors. It has been a real pleasure to explore (and lose myself within) this Mirrormaze. Each story is a fantastically imaginative, seductively bizarre, and yet hauntingly familiar journey beyond the questionable surface reflections that we like to call Reality.
  These spinning dreamscapes will keep the reader guessing, and often lingered in the back of my mind long after the book was closed. Personal “stand-out favourites” include: The Future Is Milk by Courtney LoCicero; Origin by Yelena Calavera; A Bottle of Jinn and So Long by Cliff Jones Jr.; Kiss of Fire by Anna Tizard; and Thatcher Maugden and the Dream Witch by Dez Schwartz.
  (*Hugely important to note that this is my 2nd attempt at compiling a list of favourites - my 1st ended up with nearly all 29 stories from the Contents section being listed! The quality is simply that good.)
  I would highly recommend this Dreampunk collection, and will be following many of the authors with a great interest for future publications!
  
• 
  Heather Daughrity

  It's hard to write a review when you're not quite sure you've touched back down in reality yet, but here goes...
  
  Mirrormaze is an anthology unlike any other. I'm not sure I can form many coherent sentences after reading it, so here's some words and phrases:
  
  Fever dream,
  Bad drug trip,
  Good drug trip,
  Hallucination,
  Past life experience,
  Waking dream,
  Heatstroke mirage,
  Semi-conscious mind-drifting.
  
  The stories in this collection take place in that vague, shadowy land halfway between waking and dreaming. There are strange things here, bizarre things, feelings of panic and helplessness but also of dream-quest clarity. The books starts out by addressing the reader directly, informing you that you've just accidentally introduced a strange new drug into your bloodstream and then run for safety into a mirrored funhouse in the midst of an abandoned amusement park. It then allows you to progress through the stories in choose-your-own-adventure style, which adds wonderfully (horrifically) to the feeling of disorientation and outright weirdness that flows through the entire book.
  
  The stories are all well-written, beautifully written, actually, and the writers obviously have some crazy stuff happening in their imaginations. I'll be happy to recommend this book to lovers of the strange and unusual, as soon as my eyes uncross and the room stops spinning.