The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- 35,00 kr
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- 35,00 kr
Publisher Description
One of NPR's Best Books of 2016 and a Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, and Locus Award finalist for Best Novella
Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women’s College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her.
"Kij Johnson's haunting novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is both a commentary on a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and a profound reflection on a woman's life. 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. 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. A remarkable accomplishment that repays rereading." —Pamela Sargent, winner of the Nebula Award
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Nebula-winner Johnson's (At the Mouth of the River of Bees) absorbing novella, Ulthar Women's College mathematics professor Vellitt Boe, who lives in the land of dreams, must track down Clarie Jurat, a student who seems to have run away with a man who inhabits the waking world. It's important she's found, since her father is a trustee of the college, and this is a scandal that might get women banned from the school. Vellitt sets off across an ever-shifting dreamworld of whimsical, scheming elder gods, treacherous yet wildly beautiful landscapes, and fantastical creatures. As one might guess from the title, Lovecraftian elements abound, such as the black cat that follows Vellitt from Ulthar and rides atop her backpack, as well as bodies of water and cities straight out of the mythos. Vellitt's journey is one of self-realization, courage, and discovery, and she must reconcile the adventurous person she once was with the ordered, unadorned life she now inhabits. Superb worldbuilding and gorgeous prose will hold readers rapt: "In an earlier decade, she would have taken passage on so graceful a ship without regard to destination; she would willingly have sailed off the world's edge in to the abyssal chaos if she could do so cradled among these flowing curves. Beauty, true beauty, had that power." Utterly irresistible.
