Borne: A Novel

Rachel, a scavenger in a destroyed city, finds a strange thing in the fur of a giant flying bear. She brings it home, and despite the misgivings of her partner, Wick, she names it Borne, keeps it, feeds it, and it grows and develops, and talks. It becomes her child, and like any child it must eventually grow beyond her and go out into the world, but she knows that her child, lovable and innocent and sweet, is a killer. Killing seems to be part of its fundamental nature. How can she love a killing thing? How can she let it loose on an already ravaged city? Can she even claim to have any control or authority over it?

With dangers closing in and driving them from their home, Rachel and Wick are forced on a journey to the heart of the show more Company that bred the giant flying bear, and who may or may not have bred Borne, but most of the secrets they eventually uncover are secrets about themselves.

A strange, powerful and evocative novel, of a strange kind of family somehow clinging together in a strange decaying world. Children in this are destructive: the bear's proxies, the feral orphans, Borne himself. Are they made that way by neglect or interference or inner natures or as a response to environment? Can they be helped or controlled or even survived? Can you forgive them for what they do? Can you forgive yourself? Can you help them? Can you help yourself? Can anyone fix a broken world?

A surreal story of surviving, and deciding to survive alone or together. show less

Although some of the themes of the "Southern Reach" trilogy are here (the concern with environmental degradation, the deformation of character imposed by predatory organizations, the secrets we hide from others) I do get a very different vibe from the world depicted here as opposed to the world of Area X. The simplest way to explain this is that while "Southern Reach" reminded me of "X-Files" at its most nihilistic filtered through H.P. Lovecraft, this book plays more in the post-apocalyptic space carved out by J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick and, for that matter, Richard Matheson. In this book the worst has essentially happened (as compared to looming sense of doom in the trilogy) and the one real question is whether there will be a show more saving remnant in the end. Or, to put it another way (and at the risk of making a spoiler), "Southern Reach" was partly about what would a clean slate look like, this book seems to deal more with the persistence of memory and the human will to survive as positive things. show less

The New Yorker has called Jeff VanderMeer a “weird Thoreau,” and the Guardian says his work is “Ovidian in its underpinnings.” I can’t really disagree with either of these assessments, but Borne also reminded me strongly of Octavia Butler. Both writers seem to care deeply about the fantastic dystopian biology of the worlds they create.

In Borne, society responded to an ecological and social disaster by transferring power to a genetic engineering company that created new food animals laced with drugs to keep the population docile. Then, it all collapsed. The new beasts and strange plants got into the wild, mutated, and became even more bizarre and dangerous. Rachel and a rogue bioengineer live in an abandoned building they call show more Balcony Cliffs. They scavenge remnant tech and odd organisms. One day, Rachel retrieves what she thinks is a small plant that turns out to be a sapient shape-changer. All three characters are well drawn, and the plot has unexpected twists.

At the end, there is a glossary of fantastic beasts and plants. It would be fun to read it first, but you should save it for last because it creates spoilers. show less

This is my first VanderMeer Book. I read it for weird fiction category and I think it fit perfectly. I think he does a great job with prose though not consistently but here is a sample from the first two paragraphs. "I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day..." I am still trying to picture a sunny gunmetal day. The author uses a lot of color and smells in his writing.

This book is a dystopian book, set in some near future time when the world has been wrecked by companies who destroy the ecology, create biotech and the political and cultural structure has collapsed. The protagonist is Rachel, who doesn't really have full recall of how she ended up here. She works as a scavenger for her lover Wick. Rachel finds Borne one day and brings him show more home. Borne is like a child for Rachel. The child comes between she and Wick. She begins to have secrets from Wick. Wick has secrets from Rachel. So this would be your standard triangle of mother, father and child. Then there is the monster, a giant biotech bear called Mord who is huge, flies and crushes and devours. And there is the Magician who is trying to take control of everything; the company, Wick, etc.

I do love the author's sense of humor but he also offers up insights into relationships, secrets, and faithfulness. It is definitely weird and gruesome with everyone scavenging and eating what ever and most of it sounds quite awful but also a book of hope. Vandermeer grew up in Fiji and that experience does inform the book where he talks about "smell of brine", "tidal pools of my youth". show less

The book Borne is, "as terrible and beautiful and sad and sweet as life itself." (p. 7) This quote is actually Rachel speaking of the drug (memory beetles) that her companion Wick sells. But I think it's an accurate description of each of the three main characters - Rachel, Wick, and Borne itself - and the strange family they comprise.

In addition to being the convoluted story of these three and the ravaged city they live in, it is also a meditation on what a person is and how trust, distrust, secrets, love, and forgiveness mingle in our lives, and the strange places that give rise to (or bear) hope.

Re-read 6/14/18:

It never ceases to astound me how much one day's blow-me-over imaginative fiction can suddenly be a warm and cozy blanket to carry me through a chilly night. Or, I should say, an enormous bear-hug to destroy whatever is left of a dystopian-ravaged city to give my belly a good belly laugh.

But it does, and strange is the new comfort food. :)

It may not be as great the second time because I knew what the reveals were going to be, but I still enjoyed the sheer beauty of the imagination going on here. So good. :)

And yes, I still think this is a better, even if more accessible, novel than the Area X ones. :)


Original Review:

This is probably going to be one of those times where I rail against the universe and popularity norms show more because this novel is an exemplary piece of imaginative fiction that goes well above and beyond the call of any duty to amaze, wonder, and offer up a meal of monstrously epic proportions.

First, I should say that no matter how much I loved the weirdness and the atmosphere of VanderMeer's previous trilogy, nothing quite prepared me for just how good this was going to be. In fact, if I didn't already have an ultimate favorite for the year's best SF already, I'd be pushing this one to the fore. But that's not going to stop me from nominating it for the Hugo, mind you. :)

Why?

It's deceptively simple and very engaging at first, but as life and growth become a bit more complicated, as it always seems to get, or when your lover starts getting jealous of your rescued intelligent abandoned biotech creature, then you have to make a few decisions.

Add that to the fact that this whole world is a brilliant biopunk nightmare dystopia where most people have died and minnows are alcoholic and a gigantic bear eclipses the night, dropping monsters and salvageable biotech down onto the broken city, and we've got ourselves a recipe for a piece of imagination that will rival most books anywhere. Add to this a very wonderful and generous dose of wit and charm, delightful characterizations and dialogues between Rachael, Wick, and our loveable ubermonster, Borne, and I'm shot over the moon.

The devil is in the details, of course, and there are enough details for any fan of Geoff Ryman, early Greg Bear, and the more recent Robert Jackson Bennett.

So what's my complaint, again? The fact that I love this so much? No, of course not... it's the fact that it's WEIRD.

I love weird! I love it to freaking death! I live for weird! And it's a weird that rides on the coattails of originality, too!

I mean, sure, we've seen a lot of oddball and screwy (read cute) biotech monstrosities in the world of fiction, from Heinlein to cartoon shows, but few will do as smooth a job of turning an ubermonster into a delightful child to be raised, who never needs to poop or pee, and which focuses all its energies on what it means to be a person when there's no such "thing" left in this world.

At least, of course, until it all goes wrong... or what that means to the rest of the city, Rachel and Wick's relationship or the fact a series of godzilla-like battles will rage across the world.

Pretty, no?

Yeah, this is the good shit, man. This is the stuff I live for. Now if only I could get everyone else in the world to see this my way. :) show less

A fable disguised as a dystopia, set in a ruined City on an unnamed Earth, where Rachel scavenges for supplies to give her lover, Wick, who makes biotech to sell to other survivors. The City is ruled by a gigantic bear, Mord, a bio-engineered relic of the once-powerful Company, and a woman known only as the Magician schemes to take over. Then, Rachel finds some strange biotech, which at first she thinks is just a plant, but he grows and changes and shows his intelligence. She names him Borne, and although she loves him and thinks of him as a child she is raising, she does not know what he is exactly, or how dangerous.

This is a story about what a person is and how a person is made. It is a fairy tale, with a quest and a battle and show more possibly a happy ending. What I enjoy about VanderMeer's writing is the strangeness of his imagination, and yet how he makes that strangeness accessible to readers like me. Although I did not enjoy Borne as much as I did the Southern Reach trilogy, I found it thoroughly absorbing, a compelling story set in a strange and magical, yet familiar, world. show less