Rating: 
Summary: Totally Engrossing!!
Review: I read this for the 1st time when it was first out. This was the first time I'd picked up any book by Stephen Donaldson, And I loved it!! I had to wait for the sequel "A Man Rides Through" and boy was that a pain, but together they make make for one really awesome story. A very well thought world with interesting and different types of characters. Satisfies any craving you might have in your reading: adventure, romance, intrigue, mystery, fantasy, all in one story. With all the revelations that come in the second book, buy that one at the same time so you won't have to wait to find out what happens. Great read for the summer!! Just a warning: if you are reading a page and look over and see an italicized sentence on the next page, be prepared for some major action! They really need to make this into a movie! I'm about to read it again (for the 5th time) this summer!
Rating: 
Summary: Great characters
Review: Donaldson's greatest strength is his characters. He creates complex characters (nothing and I do mean NOTHING is as it seems in this story). Every single character, every person named has importance and a back story, a reason for being. This makes the novel tightly bound and highly enjoyable.Another strength of the novel is the plot. Although for the first four hundred pages or so, the main characters never leave the castle it doesn't matter. There is so much going on, so much happening that the lack of setting doesn't matter. The undercurrent of events are always flowing. The concept of mirrors, having something beneath them applies to the land of Mordant for things are not reflected as they appear. Another great strength is the dialogue. The Castellean Lebbick has many inspirational lines. All of the characters have different tones - the confident Master Eremis, energetic Geraden, Teresa's timidity - their characters are reflected in their dialogue. This is my favourite series of Donaldson's. The characters are move believable and more likeable (I could never totally displace the incidents of his other novels). Overall a great and highly recommended book.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful !!!!!
Review: Powerful. One word describes it. A word of caution though. Make sure you have the sequel "A man rides through" with you in hand before you start on this one. The ending of the first book will make you feel like jumping into the second book straight away without a break. This was the first book of Stephen Donaldson that I read and I was really impressed by the plot and character development. This book has everything, court politics, intrigue, mystery, blunders, puzzle, sword fighting, invasion, treachery, patriotism, alien beasts, imagery and you name it. The character development is not very fast and at times the characters are really helpless. I agree with a previous reviewer that "gets maddening to the point where you wish you could jump into your own mirror and help them out". Towards the end you will just stop doing anything else except reading the book. This book is a must read for all those who are fascinated by the concept of magic mirrors and people being translated though mirrors to other worlds, this is the book for you. The concept is stunning. I cant wait to read the sequel. Light reading, and extremely well written.
Rating:
Summary: Fantasy/Mystery with a nauseating viewpoint character
Review: The nation of Mordant is in great trouble: renegade mages conjure alien beasts that ravage the countryside; enemy empires amass armies at the border. Treachery hangs in the air like a heavy mist. And, worst of all, Mordant's senile King seems to be consciously working toward the ruin of the kingdom he himself cobbled together from a handful of burnt-over duchies... We all knew it would happen sooner or later: Mr. Donaldson launched yet another hapless mortal into a magical world. This time his victim is Terisa Morgan, a wisp of a woman who, having grown up in an abusive household, lacks any self-confidence whatsoever. She is literally petrified with indecisiveness at every step, unless she follows a pointless day-to-day routine that promises an uneventful journey straight into the grave. Worst of all, she relies on mirrors to confirm her very existence. Oh, and she's remarkably easy to seduce. Thus, we have two themes running alongside in this first part of a huge fantasy/mystery novel: the gathering stormclouds around the castle of Orison (which serves as the King's stronghold), and Teresa's slow quest to abandon her passivity. There are several things wrong with this: what Terisa loses in passivity, she hardly gains in any other area - as the book speeds towards the cliffhanger ending, she becomes flatter and flatter; nevertheless, even in an active state, logic seems to cost her a great deal: Donaldson sets up one of the characters as ruthless and evil, but Teresa is too busy having a sort of confused romance with him to pry any deeper. The accumulating mystery is nothing short of gripping. Unfortunately, it goes on with hardly any resolution for six-and-a-half hundred pages, five hundred of which Terisa spends in two states: she is either sitting passively in her room, or is dragged about Orison by some character or another. I can only hope that all the resolution takes place in the second volume of Mordant's Need, otherwise help me God. The word imagery is certainly vivid. Not even the fact that the entire book takes place in a single castle, and that this fantasy world has hardly any fantasy elements besides the art of conjuring things by producing them out of mirrors reflects on the quality of the writing. The characters are certainly deep and convincing, despite the genre's usual trends. Nevertheless, I felt a certain sense of dissatisfaction, as if the characters tired me, however complex they were. Is this an excellent read? Certainly. Can I guarantee that you will enjoy reading about a mounting mystery for six hundred pages straight, only to have to look for the second volume? Absolutely not. But it certainly looks impressive in hardcover...
Rating: 
Summary: Kill Teresa...page 3.
Review: Then this book would be good. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Donaldson. I seem to always love the worlds/settings he creates, and absolutely loathe his characters. After that sniveling, whiny little loser Thomas Covenant, I didn't think he could write a worse character. Teresa proved me wrong. Here we find a woman who is paralyzed by a need to have some kind of external verification of her existence. This is not an interesting little flaw that adds depth to the character, it is a crippling mental illness. We find out early on that if Teresa cannot see herself in a mirror, she immediately questions whether or not she even exists! What!!!!! The mere act of wondering should be enough to verify existence, but instead we get hundreds of pages of her insane, whiny, hopeless, stupid internal dialog as she tries to prove to herself that she exists. Teresa is, if anything, more whiny, weak, hopeless and annoying than Covenant. The good part: The world of Mordant is amazing. The whole concept of a land of magic mirrors is a stunning setting for an epic fantasy. The plotting and scheming of the villians is clever and subtle, and the groundwork laid in this book for the events of a "Man Rides Through" is a necessary evil. I've always loved the thought of mirrors as gateways to other worlds, and this book takes that theme and runs with it. I give the book two stars because I simply cannot stand the main character. My opinion of Teresa (in case you didn't pick up on the first paragraph) is that she should be stabbed in the eye with an icepick and die on page 3 to clear the way for the real story and the real heros. If you liked the Covenant books, you will most likely love this, so I would in fact recommend it. If you hate Covenant's ineffectual whining, moaning, complaining and inaction, you will hate this book, as it contains (IMO) the worst main character ever inflicted on fantasy readers.
Rating:
Summary: Really Good!
Review: This book is really great. The tone and development are all incredibly compelling and realistic. I enjoyed the storyline as well as the complex characters.
Rating:
Summary: A splendid fantasy novel
Review: I literally stumbled over this book on a flea market, not aware it was on the first part of an amazing two-volumes novel by Donaldson. And it took me quite some time to find the sequel... Still, this book had a great impact of me. It was one of those novels you can read from the first to the last page, without any interruption, mostly because of the main character, a young frustrated woman brought into a new world, a parallel universe, middle-age style, where magic still exists... Slowly, over the time she spends in this world, she gets rid of her own problems, getting more and more involved in the intrigues of this fantastic world she starts to like more and more, until she arrives at the point where she has the possibility to go back, but finally doesnt... I particularly liked that the main character was a woman, who finally will be able to make her way in this world dominated by prejudiced men... The plot of the book is just brilliant, the characters fascinating, even the bad guys, and this is a great pleasure to read... But to find out about all the secrets in this book, you will need to read the equally well written sequel (A man rides through) to this volume and therefore I recommend you greatly to buy the two books together if you want to read this story.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen R. Donaldson Rules!
Review: I've read a lot of fantasy books in my life, and I have to say that Stephen Donaldson is probably one of the best sci-fi and fantasy writers I've ever come across. Mirror of Her Dreams was a truly exciting book. After I finished it, I ran to our local bookstore and bought the second book, A Man Rides Through, and zipped through the story. If you haven't read the Thomas Covenant Chronicles yet, you're missing out!
Rating:
Summary: Good fantasy, no epic
Review: The plot was simpler, the characters less complex, and the ideas more straightforward than the Covenant series, and much much more so than the Gap Series. This is light reading, where the good guys are clearly good and the bad very bad, where actions move slowly but surely and romance prevails in the end. There is good character development (Donaldson's a master of that), but these characters simply are not as complex or INTERESTING as in the Covenant or Gap series. Final conclusion - Good, light, predictable fantasy expertly written - you won't have to think as hard or pay as close attention as you would for his longer workers, but Donaldson fans who know what to expect won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: More praise!
Review: When I first read "The Mirror of Her Dreams" I was forced to wait months and months for the sequel to be published. It was well worth the wait. "Mordant's Need" is my favorite work by Donaldson, who I consider one of the best authors of our day. These are the kind of books that you can read over and over and still find yourself lost in them, neglecting everything else around you. These are the kind of books you need to own, not just borrow from the library because you'll find many a grey day when they are the perfect companion. If you find you love them, you may also find you love Stephen R. Lawhead's Song of Albion Trilogy.
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