In a ruined city, Rachel, a scavenger, finds a small creature named "Borne" tangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic bear made by a biotech firm. She knows her lover, Wick, is keeping secrets about working there, so she searches his stuff and finds a journal titled "Mord." What is he hiding?
What an original little book. Borne (who in my mind usually looked like Philippe from Achewood, only a tentacled vase?) is a weird creature found by the main character, Rachel. Despite being set in yet another post-collapse dystopia, this book is anything but cliché.
Fantastic bit of worldbuilding and every bit as weird as I was hoping for. There is alot more fantastical elements to this story than Vandermeers previous books. This was a feature to me, while it may not be for others. Be warned though, this ride will be very pulpy and hard to stomach. The beauty is there, it just requires a greater toll.
Addon after completing the series, hopefully this helps someone know what they're getting into: I would say Borne is great as a standalone and doesn't need any of the other two books. Strange Bird adds a heart breaking and beautiful layer of nuance to the world and makes for a great Duology. Dead Astronauts does for me what Strange Bird did, while requiring a huge cognitive lift to really enjoy.
This is a wonderful book. In the aknowledgments the writer thanks his cat for inspiring some of the behaviors of the creatures in this book and it makes sense. I kept thinking about my cats while reading this.
This one was over the top strange. I was ready to give up within the first 15 pages but kept coming back to read a page or two before I returned it to the library. I don't know what happened but I finished it. Same with Annihilation in that curiosity got me.
Deals with what it means to be human, or a person, a good person, not a bad person.
Too bleak. Too dark. Too unbelievable.
"We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means."
A flying gigantic bear? A strange plant-like, shape shifting, creature that constantly grows, has an obsession with lizards, but never poops? All in a post apocalyptic world? This had the means to be great, and I'm sad to say I was disappointed.
The first half was excellent, I thoroughly enjoyed Rachel teaching Borne about the world and the sheer absurdity of this strange but loveable creature. But the book rapidly became more and more unhinged. I've read other Jeff VanderMeer books, and while building unhinged worlds is his thing, something about this one just didn't work for me.
my take: "post apocalyptic anime with giant bear, starring sad scavenger mom who adopts a ditto"
jeff's ability to write a believable woman is mostly ok, but you can still tell he is a man writing a woman
i read it pretty quick. i was surprised and confused by a few parts, which was nice.
Has definite moments but never matches The Southern Reach series.
There really is no science fiction writer like Jeff VanderMeer. The way he expertly constructs this dystopian landscape of twisted biotechnology is both fascinating and horrific. I definitely got Annihilation vibes and loved every second of it. I enjoy his method of world building where it is teased more than explained: revealed in the action rather than the exposition.
But with that being said, I had some of the same struggles with this book that I did with his previous ones. Often, action is mixed in with exposition and introspection, which made it hard to follow the flow of the story. I often had to read and re-read paragraphs to make sure I didn't miss any important details about what characters are doing, nested in a paragraph about a dilapidated room.
I already have the next book and I'm so excited to get started with it.
Strange mix of dystopian, Frankenstein, and giant Monster story. Weird but enjoyable.
This was my first experience with Jeff VanderMeer's novels. It was not an easy read, but not arduous, either. It's well-written, and I enjoyed his style. I admire the way he writes dialogue and describes surroundings. Instead of summarizing the book, which has been done so well already, I'd like to simply say that this story is told in the first person by a likeable narrator named Rachel, who is living with her friend and lover, Wick. The story is set sometime in the future, when civilization as we know it has collapsed due to ecological factors, but there is still a corporation wielding what little control that it can. Rachel is a scavenger, Wick deals drugs, but he's not the type of drug dealer we think of today (that's another story). The action starts when Rachel discovers something she eventually names Borne.
What is Borne--plant or animal? Could he …
This was my first experience with Jeff VanderMeer's novels. It was not an easy read, but not arduous, either. It's well-written, and I enjoyed his style. I admire the way he writes dialogue and describes surroundings. Instead of summarizing the book, which has been done so well already, I'd like to simply say that this story is told in the first person by a likeable narrator named Rachel, who is living with her friend and lover, Wick. The story is set sometime in the future, when civilization as we know it has collapsed due to ecological factors, but there is still a corporation wielding what little control that it can. Rachel is a scavenger, Wick deals drugs, but he's not the type of drug dealer we think of today (that's another story). The action starts when Rachel discovers something she eventually names Borne.
What is Borne--plant or animal? Could he be a person? What is a person? I saw shades of Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in some of Rachel's conversations with Borne--and not just there, but enough of that--no spoilers. And The Company's meddling with genetics and complete control reminded me a bit of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
This is a dark novel, but hang in there... there will be an exciting climax, and an ending that I found to be realistic and optimistic. After Rachel's story ends, there is an interesting and humorous section at the end--nice touch!
This was an intriguing read, and I'm happy for the experience.
Hmmm. I guess, I liked it? The story is wonderful, the characters are a little difficult to like until the end, and the prose was beautiful but frequently laborious. I acknowledge the brilliance of this book without wholly subscribing to the hype.
This is a book about a ruined city ruled by a giant flying biotech bear named Mord. That description beggars the question of why you should bother reading it. But the author pulls it off, with gusto. This is compelling and fun dystopian fiction, filled with wonderful turns of phrases and moments that give you somber pause. This is what teens should be reading instead of the drab Hunger Games series.
Oh this was great. Yes, there is a giant bear. Half the rest of the cast is stranger than the bear. It's a wild story that would probably do okay on its own.
But the story is entirely eclipsed by the narration. Everything is told from the point of view of Rachel, a woman of color, an orphaned refugee. This point of view is very different from the standard. Her goal is not to uncover the plot. Her goal is not to solve the challenge ahead. She is so different from what I am used to from other fiction, and yet she is more human for it. So many unexpected decisions that I would probably make the same way. (If I ever faced the same, rather unlikely, circumstances.)
Oh and the writing. A lot of the book is about people saying different things than they think and yet understanding each …
Oh this was great. Yes, there is a giant bear. Half the rest of the cast is stranger than the bear. It's a wild story that would probably do okay on its own.
But the story is entirely eclipsed by the narration. Everything is told from the point of view of Rachel, a woman of color, an orphaned refugee. This point of view is very different from the standard. Her goal is not to uncover the plot. Her goal is not to solve the challenge ahead. She is so different from what I am used to from other fiction, and yet she is more human for it. So many unexpected decisions that I would probably make the same way. (If I ever faced the same, rather unlikely, circumstances.)
Oh and the writing. A lot of the book is about people saying different things than they think and yet understanding each other on some level. This is what is going on in real life all the time! And I see it so rarely in books. I think it is because it is super hard to pull off. It is a total success here though. Maybe because you get to know Rachel so well through the narration that reveals much of her thoughts.
All this is presented in fantastic prose. It is not just cleverly written to make for more interesting reading. Just look at these sentences and you will see how the elaborate phrasing packs on some extra layers of expression:
That was the moment I knew I’d decided to trade my safety for something else. That was the moment. And no matter what happened next, I had crossed over into another place, and the question wasn’t who I should trust but who should trust me.
Wick kept too many secrets. It was getting too difficult—occupying the same space but traveling through separate universes of need, of want.
The worst thing was that I could not escape any of the passing seconds. Every moment came to me clear and distinct, and no one moment stood for anything but itself.
I just don't like Jeff's books.
