The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a fantastic tale of an adventure in Dreamlands. It's a story about a teacher trying to find her lost pupil, but more than that, it's a tale of an aging woman finding herself after being seemingly content for years.

Johnson's story is adjacent to Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, but reading Lovecraft is by no means required to enjoy this book. Exactly opposite, in fact - whereas Lovecraft was a tedious and meandering read, this is an interesting and well thought tale.

Having said that, though, something of Lovecraft seems to have oozed into the structure of the story: Vellitt Boe is in great hurry to move through Dreamlands, and even if it's more coherent than Lovecraft's take, it still seems somewhat aimless. The final scenes, on the other hand, are handled hastily even if they pack whole lot of meaning in them.

I don't really care about ghouls, ghasts and gugs, so I'm willing to bet Vellitt Boe would've been a lot more interesting without the Lovecraft connection. As it is, though, it's still a lot better book than its predecessor.