323 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2017 by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In a ruined, nameless city of the future, a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, finds a creature she names “Borne” entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic, despotic bear. Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the Company, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers like Rachel.
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.
Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an …
In a ruined, nameless city of the future, a woman named Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, finds a creature she names “Borne” entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic, despotic bear. Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the Company, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers like Rachel.
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.
Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.
Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.
Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,” a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?
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.
Annihilation consumes the reader with raw horror; Authority creeps around the readers' expectation for thrills with a keen, conspiratorial unravelling; Acceptance delivers an alien-yet-familiar world.
Borne tells of a humanity that the reader carries with them through the end-of-the-world to the other side; Borne shapes what comes after. Borne consumes what came before, what the reader could not have shaken off otherwise.
