Map of Dreams (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Gordon Van Gelder (Afterword)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sorrows, anguish and bitter might-have-beens dominate Rickert's fitfully brilliant collection of fantasy fiction, whose title novella, according to Gordon Van Gelder's afterword, reveals a love of the natural world that wonderfully imbues the author's often enigmatic fiction. Rickert's nature is less illumined by golden daffodils than "red in tooth and claw," rife with the fierce necessary complements of birth and death, reality and dream, sanity and madness. Rickert acknowledges her "magical realism" owes a literary debt to Gabriel García Marquez, but her most powerful passages, like "Moorina of the Seals," a startling ecological hymn, and "Many Voices," the horrific exposé of a women's prison, draw on woman's strengths and weaknesses as maiden, matron and crone. "Leda" and her other subtle retellings of myth, couched in the deceptively prosaic dialogue of America's underprivileged, achieve resonances that plumb the darkest depths of human love and loneliness, and occasionally rise to "the song that both connects, and disconnects us, shared, but never owned, life."
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Product Description

Set in a reality where nightmares do not fade upon waking, this anthology skims along the surface of life and dips just beneath, revealing the hidden machinations that fuel dreams. These underlying myths and fantasies exist not as musty old stories but as ancient truths that have come to illuminate the modern human condition. The title story touches on themes of grief, redemption, and time travel; "Cold Fire" ventures into love and obsession; and "Peace on Suburbia" introduces readers to a Christmas with an entirely different kind of savior. These and 13 other tales are framed by four interludes—Dreams, Nightmares, Waking, and Rising—that guide readers through a world that is at once familiar and eerily off-kilter.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930846444
• ISBN-13: 978-1930846449
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #521,220 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Touching, August 29, 2008

By	Joshua Mason "Book Maven" (The Plains) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The stories in Map of Dreams are simply touching. Which is to say that every single story ends with a combination of words that leaves you feeling some kind of emotion. For me, the emotions these stories induce were never easily labeled, but maybe that is just my limited vocabulary.

M. Rickert touches life though the genre of fantasy. In her stories you can find all of the things that make life so wonderful and so awful. She mixes both tragedy and hope, touching what it is to lose and to love. I don't mean to sound so cheesy, but she really does touch the very fabric of human existence.

And the best part is that she is only getting better with time. All of the new stories I have read from her have been nothing short of wonderful.

M. Rickert is indeed a "find".

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories you will not forget easily, July 11, 2008

By	Christopher Barzak (Youngstown, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

M. Rickert's first collection, Map of Dreams, is beautiful, magical, real, incantatory, evocative, lush, poetic, full of narrative momentum and characters and situations that you will not easily forget. There is a generous amount of heart and sympathy in these stories, and a wealth of wisdom. Don't read this book at your own risk.