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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
adventurous
fast-paced
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
And then, oh, I loved this. I like road narratives when they're well-done, and I was riveted to this one thanks to its middle-aged female academic protagonist (with sidekick cat!!), plus interesting incidents and a fascinating world to traverse.
I feel like I should've read [b:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|722667|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1293312354s/722667.jpg|926162] before this, to fully contextualise it and what Johnson was doing, but I could still absolutely appreciate this through the lens of ineffable horrors made commonplace, and a place in which our own Earth world is the alien one -- and yet in which women still have to face the familiar spectre of sexism ('To him, she had been landscape, an articulate crag he could ascend, a face to put to this place. When were women ever anything but footnotes to men's tales?').
It was a fascinating sideways look at Lovecraftian mythos. I've said this before about [b:The Litany of Earth|21943848|The Litany of Earth|Ruthanna Emrys|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398031519s/21943848.jpg|41247953], but I faintly suspect that I like Lovecraft's world & setting in the hands of other writers more than I like Lovecraft's writing itself. It's similar to the move that Mat Johnson pulled with [b:Pym|8501708|Pym|Mat Johnson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320435734s/8501708.jpg|13367639] wrt [b:The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|766869|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|Edgar Allan Poe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1341387331s/766869.jpg|44915222] (which, relatedly, inspired HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) -- in the sense of female and POC authors backtracking to examine the blank spaces, the problematic gaps in the canon, taking their own more-diverse look at it. I'm always interested in seeing adaptations and retellings like this if they're well-done, and so The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe jots neatly into that.
I feel like I should've read [b:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|722667|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1293312354s/722667.jpg|926162] before this, to fully contextualise it and what Johnson was doing, but I could still absolutely appreciate this through the lens of ineffable horrors made commonplace, and a place in which our own Earth world is the alien one -- and yet in which women still have to face the familiar spectre of sexism ('To him, she had been landscape, an articulate crag he could ascend, a face to put to this place. When were women ever anything but footnotes to men's tales?').
It was a fascinating sideways look at Lovecraftian mythos. I've said this before about [b:The Litany of Earth|21943848|The Litany of Earth|Ruthanna Emrys|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398031519s/21943848.jpg|41247953], but I faintly suspect that I like Lovecraft's world & setting in the hands of other writers more than I like Lovecraft's writing itself. It's similar to the move that Mat Johnson pulled with [b:Pym|8501708|Pym|Mat Johnson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320435734s/8501708.jpg|13367639] wrt [b:The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|766869|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|Edgar Allan Poe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1341387331s/766869.jpg|44915222] (which, relatedly, inspired HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) -- in the sense of female and POC authors backtracking to examine the blank spaces, the problematic gaps in the canon, taking their own more-diverse look at it. I'm always interested in seeing adaptations and retellings like this if they're well-done, and so The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe jots neatly into that.
Really beautiful worldbuilding. Favorite parts:
1) the gug -> old car
2) the litttle black cat!
1) the gug -> old car
2) the litttle black cat!
adventurous
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Good characters, nice descriptions of the world and people/creatures and a satisfying plot, despite the fact that it starts off with a young woman leaving her education behind to follow some stupid man. It did seem like at every turn the mc is foiled by men with power just being at best not helpful. All the characters with power in the dreamlands are men, either gods (despite having no gender they seem to choose he/him pronouns), their chosen representatives who seem to all be men, or the regular men folk ruling the rest of the world.
A good commentary on the absence of women in Lovecraft's work - but doesn't really answer the question of why the dreamers are always men. I can guess that despite his friendships with women, Lovecraft must have assumed, like Carter in this book, that women don't 'dream big.' And assuming dreaming of a world full of the same evils as the waking world is a 'big' dream. Violent men, enslavers, those with power abusing it at the expense of those just trying to have a life, and of course limited opportunities for women. Why would women dream of that?
A good commentary on the absence of women in Lovecraft's work - but doesn't really answer the question of why the dreamers are always men. I can guess that despite his friendships with women, Lovecraft must have assumed, like Carter in this book, that women don't 'dream big.' And assuming dreaming of a world full of the same evils as the waking world is a 'big' dream. Violent men, enslavers, those with power abusing it at the expense of those just trying to have a life, and of course limited opportunities for women. Why would women dream of that?
I didn't realise, going into this, that this was a short novel (a little over 150 pages).
I understand from the afterword and the buzz surrounding the book that it's a retelling of sorts--based on something HP Lovecraft wrote. (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, whose main character is a minor character in Vellitt's story.)
I recently attempted another HP Lovecraft-inspired novel (Winter Tide), but didn't get very far. Winter Tide imagines that some descendants of Lovecraftian creatures are living in our world, and are just trying to slip under the radar. Despite taking place in libraries, my favorite of all settings, I found myself slipping away after about 1/3 of the book.
This book comes from the opposite direction--namely, a story mainly of a Lovecraftian setting, with Lovecraftian gods and Lovecraftian characters (with Lovecraftian names), that dips its toe into our world, but only at the very end. (There are also a few libraries, and a university.)
I liked this story, but I am one of the few whose interests in books lies firmly at the intersection of a venn diagram of travelogues and weird fiction.
I own and have tried to read China Mieville's The Scar several times. I have not yet completed it, but the first bit takes place on a ship, with interesting characters and interesting happenings, and there was much of that feeling in Vellitt's story. It's easy to see why China Mieville has been likened to a modern-day HP Lovecraft, given that they both write 'weird' fiction--no, weirder than that. Still weirder. Wait...sprinkle on some more weird, because it was nearly comprehensible. There. Now you've got a proper Weird Fiction story.
Despite the inherent Weirdness of the story (ghouls and gugs and ghasts and petty/greedy/angry gods), Johnson treats the whole thing very matter-of-factly. In fact, I would say that the quote on the cover from Ursula K. LeGuin sums up the whole thing quite well: "Kij Johnson has an unrivaled gift for making the unreal real and the real unreal."
If you think you might enjoy this, I recommend giving it a try. It's not long, and there's some great visuals. Vellitt was an interesting character to spend time with, too. Also, there is a cat. (The cat survives, of course.)
I understand from the afterword and the buzz surrounding the book that it's a retelling of sorts--based on something HP Lovecraft wrote. (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, whose main character is a minor character in Vellitt's story.)
I recently attempted another HP Lovecraft-inspired novel (Winter Tide), but didn't get very far. Winter Tide imagines that some descendants of Lovecraftian creatures are living in our world, and are just trying to slip under the radar. Despite taking place in libraries, my favorite of all settings, I found myself slipping away after about 1/3 of the book.
This book comes from the opposite direction--namely, a story mainly of a Lovecraftian setting, with Lovecraftian gods and Lovecraftian characters (with Lovecraftian names), that dips its toe into our world, but only at the very end. (There are also a few libraries, and a university.)
I liked this story, but I am one of the few whose interests in books lies firmly at the intersection of a venn diagram of travelogues and weird fiction.
I own and have tried to read China Mieville's The Scar several times. I have not yet completed it, but the first bit takes place on a ship, with interesting characters and interesting happenings, and there was much of that feeling in Vellitt's story. It's easy to see why China Mieville has been likened to a modern-day HP Lovecraft, given that they both write 'weird' fiction--no, weirder than that. Still weirder. Wait...sprinkle on some more weird, because it was nearly comprehensible. There. Now you've got a proper Weird Fiction story.
Despite the inherent Weirdness of the story (ghouls and gugs and ghasts and petty/greedy/angry gods), Johnson treats the whole thing very matter-of-factly. In fact, I would say that the quote on the cover from Ursula K. LeGuin sums up the whole thing quite well: "Kij Johnson has an unrivaled gift for making the unreal real and the real unreal."
If you think you might enjoy this, I recommend giving it a try. It's not long, and there's some great visuals. Vellitt was an interesting character to spend time with, too. Also, there is a cat. (The cat survives, of course.)
This book is beautifully written -- intense imagery, a long and uninterrupted flow of scenes without chapters to force a stop. Instead, it's entirely scene breaks to give you a pause for breath, and that really builds out the atmosphere. It's full of horror and beauty and resentment, both embracing Lovecraft's Dreamlands and lashing out at its implications.
That said, there were aspects of the writing that didn't work for me as well as I wanted them to. Mind, they read like deliberate choices rather than lack of ability or awareness of how it'd come across -- a deliberate choice to keep a distance from events, a deliberate choice to only put in information as it becomes relevant. It pushes back against the modern sensibility of putting you in the action, and of seeding things as foreshadowing then paying them off later. But as a choice it sometimes frustrated me, because it kept me from knowing Vellitt Boe as intimately. There are hundreds of conversations that have us being told they happened instead of showing them happening, broken up only occasionally by those we need to see happening. And in a lot of cases they're character moments! We're told: Vellitt knows how to deal with an arrogant man, so she does that, and gets the information she needs. We don't see the interiority of it. It means that when she thinks back to the people she's afraid will die, only one of them (the one who told the story at the bridge) is memorable to me, because we didn't actually see the others. Likewise, most things relevant get explained right as they happen -- for example, we are told. If that memory had come earlier, it would have felt like a payoff; as it, it feels convenient instead. And that's very much an aspect of the style so ymmv on if this is a benefit or not. For me, it tended to pull me out of the moments as they happened.
That doesn't necessarily mean I liked it less, exactly -- this is probably something I'll reread in the future, honestly, and I appreciate what it did and how it was used to maintain the dreamy flow. It just meant that I engaged with the individual scenes less. And that too might be deliberate -- they're meaningless, except as part of the scenery of the Dreamlands -- but I did find myself at odds with them often throughout as a result.
A really interesting read, both technically and as a story.
That said, there were aspects of the writing that didn't work for me as well as I wanted them to. Mind, they read like deliberate choices rather than lack of ability or awareness of how it'd come across -- a deliberate choice to keep a distance from events, a deliberate choice to only put in information as it becomes relevant. It pushes back against the modern sensibility of putting you in the action, and of seeding things as foreshadowing then paying them off later. But as a choice it sometimes frustrated me, because it kept me from knowing Vellitt Boe as intimately. There are hundreds of conversations that have us being told they happened instead of showing them happening, broken up only occasionally by those we need to see happening. And in a lot of cases they're character moments! We're told: Vellitt knows how to deal with an arrogant man, so she does that, and gets the information she needs. We don't see the interiority of it. It means that when she thinks back to the people she's afraid will die, only one of them (the one who told the story at the bridge) is memorable to me, because we didn't actually see the others. Likewise, most things relevant get explained right as they happen -- for example, we are told
Spoiler
she once rescued a baby Gug right before that Gug shows upThat doesn't necessarily mean I liked it less, exactly -- this is probably something I'll reread in the future, honestly, and I appreciate what it did and how it was used to maintain the dreamy flow. It just meant that I engaged with the individual scenes less. And that too might be deliberate -- they're meaningless, except as part of the scenery of the Dreamlands -- but I did find myself at odds with them often throughout as a result.
A really interesting read, both technically and as a story.
I started this book because I have been given a book of Kij Johnson's short stories by my sister a few years ago and liked them a lot and wondered what she was up to these days. Well, this is her latest work and it turns out that it is actually a rewrite of an old H. P. Lovecraft novella called The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Apparently she had read the book as a youngster and wanted to rewrite the story with women and no inherent racism in it. Great idea!
So naturally, I had to stop reading this book while I went back and read my first H. P. Lovecraft story to get the background on this book. I liked this book a lot better. In fact I loved the beginning and end and found the middle, where she tried too hard to replicate the Lovecraftian atmosphere to be where the story gets bogged down. But all told I liked a lot. So check her out!
So naturally, I had to stop reading this book while I went back and read my first H. P. Lovecraft story to get the background on this book. I liked this book a lot better. In fact I loved the beginning and end and found the middle, where she tried too hard to replicate the Lovecraftian atmosphere to be where the story gets bogged down. But all told I liked a lot. So check her out!
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced