The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a novella by Kij Johnson set in the Dreamlands created by H. P. Lovecraft, reexamining the world of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath from a female perspective. It won the 2017 World Fantasy Award for Long Fiction, and was a Best Novella finalist for the 2016 Nebula Awards, the 2017 Hugo Awards, and the 2017 Locus Awards.
Johnson's Dream-Quest tells the story of Vellitt Boe, a native of the Dreamlands who was a far-traveller in her youth, but at 55 has long settled down as a professor of mathematics at Ulthar Women's College. When her best student, Clarie Jurat, runs off with a man from the waking world, Boe must relearn her travelling ways and bring her back--first to prevent Clarie's trustee father from shutting down the school, and later, when it turns out that Clarie's maternal grandfather is a sleeping god, to keep him from destroying Ulthar and the plains of the River Skai.
Vellitt journeys to Hatheg-Kla, in hopes of exiting through the Gate of Deeper Slumber; to Ilek-Vad, in hopes of obtaining the Silver Key; and through the Underworld to Sarkomand, where the ghouls have a secret staircase to the waking world; and to the fabled lands of Wisconsin and Montana, where people are "random and meaningful and beautiful."
Along the way, she is hunted by zoogs, attacked by shantak birds, menaced by night gaunts, guided by ghouls, captured by ghasts, and guarded by a faithful gug.
She meets up with former traveling companions, including Reon Atescre, who is now Nasht, high priest of the temple of Flame; and the waking-world man Randolph Carter, once her lover, now king of Ilek-Vad.
In the book's acknowledgements, Johnson writes of Lovecraft's Dream-Quest:I first read it at ten, thrilled and terrified, and uncomfortable with the racism but not yet aware that the total absence of women was also problematic. This story is my adult self returning to a thing I loved as a child and seeing whether I could make adult sense of it.
== Characters ==
* Reon Atescre: When he was Vellitt Boe's travelling companion, he "had been slim and laughing-eyed, a lighthearted, fearless man who was not attracted to women." 
* Vellitt Boe: In her youth, "she had been a far-traveller, a great walker of the Six Kingdoms, which waking-world men called the dream lands." Then she attended the Women’s College of the University of Celephaïs, where she received a Physical Studies degree in Mathematics. She came to Ulthar, She is described as "a stern-eyed woman in walking tweeds, with heavy laced boots and black-and-silver hair pulled away from her lined face." Her skin is coppery.
* Randolph Carter: A man of the waking world, and for a time Vellitt Boe's companion and lover. "Not a tall man, but dark and handsome with excellent teeth," he is "attractive in the way of all dreamers, but always with an essential, solitary coldness." He was "so wrapped and rapt in his own story that there was no room for the world around him except as it served his own tale." He becomes king of Ilek-Vad. Known as Shrike to his enemies.
* Adrian Fulton: A dreamer who had been seized by shantak birds in remote Zobna.
* Stephan Heller: A man of the waking world. "He was good-looking, tawny-skinned and dark-eyed with excellent teeth, and very tall." He takes Clarie Jurat back with him to the waking world.
* Raba Hust: Clarie Jurat's roommate, an Ancient Sarnathian scholar at Ulthar; "a heavyset girl with warm brown skin." She, Clarie and their friend Therine Angoli are known as the Three Inseparables.
* Clarie Jurat: A third-year at Ulthar Women’s College, reading Mathematics with Vellitt Boe; Boe's "best student in twenty years of teaching." She has "long laughing eyes and thick black hair she wore always in a heavy fishtail braid."
* Gnesa Petso: The Dean of Ulthar Women’s College, "a small woman with short grizzled hair and the clever eye of a hunting bird."
* Uneshyl Pos: The librarian at the Women’s College of Ulthar.
* Tir Lesh Witren: A "chatty man" who claims to be from Rinar.
== Gazetteer ==
A guide to "the Six Kingdoms, which waking-world men called the dream lands."
* Celephaïs: a shining city known for its marble streets. Vellitt Boe gets her Mathematics degree from the Women’s College of the University of Celephaïs.
* Hap: known for its sweet green wine.
* Hatheg-Kla: a great mountain whose snowy peak fades into the shifting sky. "Certain small gods had lived once on the snow-peaked slopes."
* Ilek-Vad: where Randolph Carter is king. Its glass cliffs are "wind-etched to the delicate white of hoarfrost, but wherever a crag had recently sheared off, they were clear as glass."
* Jaren: the harbor town "where the frigid Xari spilled into the northern reaches of the Cerenarian Sea." Vellitt Boe's childhood home.
* Kadath: a great mountain that bounds the plateau of Leng to the north.
* Lelag-Leng: a harbor city close to the plateau of Leng.
* Leng: an "icy and inhumane plateau bounded to the north by the great mountain Kadath."
* Mnar: known for its swamps.
* Nir: a little town with a road-inn called the Lost Lamb.
* Ograthan: a seaport known for its nephrite wharves.
* Oonai: a distant land, the source of cinnamon and sandalwood. 
* Sarkmouth: "where the dark marshes of Lomar met the Cerenarian Sea’s icy western reaches."
* Sarkomand: city that has an "ancient ghoulish city beneath" it.
* Sarrub: known for its pale-yellow wine.
* Serranian: the flying city.
* Tanarian Hills: a range of hills behind Celephaïs.
* Thalarion: A demon-haunted city surrounded by jungle.
* Thran: known for its thousand gilded spires.
* Unnamed Village: tried to escape the attention of the gods through anonymity, but their plan failed when everyone referred to them as the Unnamed Village.
* Xari: An icy river. 
* Zobna: a remote place where dreamer Adrian Fulton was seized by shantak birds.
== Bestiary ==
* Cats: They "move fearlessly between the dream lands, the moon, and the waking world—and to other, unknowable places."
* Ghasts: "scabrous, humped, horse-like; with flat faces and unsettling, intelligent eyes." They "are always aware of the main chance and respect only the highest of the Other Ones."
* Ghouls: "slumping canine-faced creatures that ate the dead and were said to have secret routes into all worlds."
* Gugs: "enormous six-pawed monsters with vertical mouths framed by shining red eyes on stalks"; "elephant-sized; oily-furred and immense-pawed creatures."
* Night-Gaunts: haunt caverns on "silent batlike wings."
* Shantaks: monstrous birds that "float...down silently on greasy wings."
* Zoogs: Small animals who are "essentially cowards that would not threaten humans unless they felt they could get away with it."
Category:Kij Johnson works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Novels