Borne

Borne is a dystopian science fiction novel that follows Rachel, a scavenger, who is surviving in a city that was destroyed and being ravaged by biotechnology created by the Company. One day, she finds a squishy, beautiful creature that smells like the sea she names Borne. The story follows Rachel, Wick, and Borne as they navigate daily survival in a volatile city and as Rachel learns what it means to be a caretaker.

I'm not selling this well, but oh man this was an unexpected love! I didn't expect to feel so attached to a biotech creature, but here we are. Because the novel is written from a first-person perspective, the reader really feels like they're experiencing this world alongside Rachel and Wick, which I loved. VanderMeer has a way of writing and setting the scene that helps you to understand just how bad things are for these characters and how much the Company destroyed the city. It's a beautiful story about relationships, love, and being a parent but it's also a cautionary tale about the dangers of biotechnology, experimentation, and the practical and ethical implications of it.

2.25 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Rachel is a young woman scavenging the ruins of a dilapidated city. She comes across Borne, a sea anemone-like creature affixed to the side of monstrous bear that patrols her territory. Rachel must contend with Borne's growing sentience (and size) as her world crumbles around her.

Borne shares a lot of stylistic DNA with Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, one of my favorite books of all time. This novel did not jibe with me in the same way, unfortunately. While Annihilation dealt with the slow creep of the unfamiliar into our known world, Borne shows a world already gone — a world filled with biotechnological monstrosities and a destroyed civilization. It's a full embrace of the New Weird genre that VanderMeer has helped popularize, but it ultimately lost me along the way.

There are nuggets of really interesting ideas found within the pages of this novel, but I found the writing style to be ultimately inaccessible. Borne lacked a cohesive narrative and a compelling mystery, which made it difficult to stay invested. In the end, all the discordant sequences coalesced into something coherent, but it wasn't enough to rectify the disinterest and confusion that came before it.

Wow, what a story of struggle and maturing, being in love and but learning how to be loving, and biotech gone way mad. Certainly a straightforward story about what it means to be a sentient, feeling being. The world itself is set is a character, in and of itself, far more than just a setting for the action and I really can't wait to read other stories of the place. Well done Mr. VanderMeer, well done indeed.

DNF at 70%

Can't deny the beautiful imagery, almost every object or person, every place, almost every page, absolutely amazing imagery.

But to embrace good imagery you need a language and a depth to bring you in, to make you actually appreciate rather than just window shop. And, like with the Annihilation series, the poor pacing, and lack of anything to grip on to or immerse in, just ruins it. I also feel such imagery demands a better “more difficult” language, with at least some playfulness and experimentation with more complex and non-traditional sentence structures - make us do some work.

Wow! What a follow up to this author's “Three A's” trilogy of a few years ago! Those three books constitute one of the wildest, most thoughtful, weirdest, creepiest, and haunting fantasy series I've yet read. So, I had high expectations for this novel. And it didn't disappoint.

To say the world of this novel is “weird” is an understatement. Yet, somehow it worked for me as I could imagine it might actually arrive. In this nearly completely collapsed society, fantastic bio-tech creatures rule. They were created by the malevolent Company for which one of the protagonists once worked. The story is told by his lover, a resourceful woman who survived the vaguely described collapse of the social order. While the relationship between these lovers is engaging, the far more fascinating connection is between the narrator and Borne, an increasingly powerful bio-tech creature.

I won't spoil the fun of how both Borne and his/its relationship with the narrator develops. It provides a surprisingly sensitive meditation on parenting and the challenges of aiding another creature in its development of self-identity.

While the conclusion of the story was somewhat confusing and not completely satisfying, the world created, especially the wholly original Borne, is one I was disappointed to leave and to which I'd like to return. Might the author make this the first book of another trilogy?

This has been a really surprising book so far. I knew nothing about it when I began it and was really struggling with the writing style. It was slogging by and didn't feel like I was going to enjoy the story at all. Around 2/3 of the way through the first part it changed pace, and began to hit its stride for me. I began to enjoy Rachael and Borne's relationship at that point.

Other than that, I'm not sure I can make any other comment. This really was ‘new weird' and I'm not sure if I enjoyed it.

Excellent eco-dystopian piece w/ some of the most dreary visions of future maybe not as distant as one would think. Harsh, but in some sense psychadelic universe full of scents, sweat, biologically modified creatures (who however still resemble humans/animals just enough for reader to relate to or identify w/). Solid underlying concepts included. Unique off-the-wall gem of contemporary sci-fi.