the dream quest of vellitt boe by kij johnson

For her, the Dreamlands are the familiar lands. She has graying hair and aches and pains when she gets up in the morning. It’s a quest story, with an older woman as the quester. This book combines gorgeous language and imagery with unexpected twists on familiar tropes. It is up to Vellitt to find her student and bring her back before the god notices her absence. If the student succeeds, then her great-grandfather, one of the Elder Gods, will surely vent his wrath upon Ulthar. One of Vellitt’s students runs away with a man from the waking world and may be trying to escape the Dreamlands. In this book, Vellitt Boe is a professor at Ulthar Women’s College. Lovecraft fans will recall that Ulthar is a town in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, a series of stories about the Dreamlands, a place that is only accessible to people from Earth (the waking world) through dreams.

One of these re-imaginings is The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, a novella by Kij Johnson. Lovecraft to create their own feminist, racially inclusive, and empowering stories. However, we are living in a golden age of women and people of color using the mythos created by the racist and sexist H.P. Given that the very thought of a Smart Bitch might have caused Lovecraft to faint, he’s an unlikely author to show up in our pages. He wasn’t keen on women either, and they seldom appear in his stories except as background characters or, in some cases, consorts of the Gods. Since he lived from 1890 – 1937, that’s really saying something. And as we’ve mentioned in other reviews, Lovecraft was, alas, incredibly racist even by the standards of his day. He’s most famous for creating the Cthulhu Mythos, which involves a network of Gods that are utterly indifferent to the affairs of humanity. Lovecraft was an incredibly influential writer of horror. A remarkable accomplishment that repays rereading.Genre: Horror, Novella, Science Fiction/Fantasy

Those familiar with Lovecraft’s work will travel through a fantasy landscape infused with Lovecraftian images viewed from another perspective, but even readers unfamiliar with his work will be enthralled by Vellitt’s quest. Vellitt’s quest to find a former student who may be the only person who can save her community takes her through a world governed by a seemingly arbitrary dream logic in which she occasionally glimpses an underlying but mysterious order, a world ruled by capricious gods and populated by the creatures of dreams and nightmares.

Lovecraft tale and a profound reflection on a woman’s life. “Kij Johnson’s haunting novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is both a commentary on a classic H.P. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her. Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women’s College.

The dream quest of vellitt boe by kij johnson