Reviewed by Maria Beltran for Readers' Favorite

Of Reality and Dreams: Tales for Underground by Loredano Cafaro is a highly introspective collection of flash fiction and short stories written in the 1990s. Submitted in 1997 by the independent initiative March Libera Creativita, this anthology was remastered for the Tales for Underground as a project of Osmotica. To complete the collection, the unpublished piece The Illusion of Free Will is also included in the final output. The collection unravels with the mysterious tale The Shadow, which sets the enigmatic tone that prevails through the succeeding flash fiction stories such as The Moon, The Lament, When Angels Die and The Mortal and the Eternal. Finally, the collection concludes with the 17-chapter Illusion of Free Will, an existential novella that poses more questions than answers to anyone trying to find the answer to the question: what is the real meaning of life?

Loredano Cafaro's Of Reality and Dreams: Tales for Underground is a philosophical, mysterious and highly interesting collection of flash fiction stories that leaves a lot to the imagination. Perhaps there is something about telling a tale in a few short sentences that teases the brain to shift into high gear or is it because the suspension of disbelief leaves a lot to the imagination? Of Reality and Dreams is the kind of book that you can't shake easily out of your cerebral cortex and what makes it even more intriguing is that these pieces were written in the 1990s, not that long ago, but somehow it feels like another world. A world that actually exists inside every human being.