4.5 stars. I couldn't put it down! ( )

“We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.”

This is an odd book - really good but slow to build. The world is barely recognizable as biotech and civilization seem to rule but so does a large bear looking thing called Mord. Not that Mord speaks, he just ravages the world - taking out buildings, sometimes protecting the Company, sometimes attacking them. It's all confusing and a bit much.

Then there's Borne. Also confusing that he moves when you don't see, takes different shapes, maybe has multiple eyes (maybe not) and seems to not have any true image you can image because he is them all.

It's hard to picture this world and it's jumble. But it's a fascinating story and the true world and its "things" will come together the more you read. Once you are able to gather all that, the true struggling to survive, the warring factions and the fight for food and bioware is a fast, interesting ride as it all comes together. I had no idea the ultimate secrets that were revealed because I was so wrapped in the story, I didn't even think to think ahead.

I definitely saw similarities in the writing style and the thoughts and personality of Rachel, from this author's previous words, and I loved thinking this was the same world, only older. I really did love this one for it's moments of showing true human nature and for the natural way it took things so odd and made me love them. The last moment, with sunshine and the balcony was my favorite. I like that last thought. ( )

Although ‘Borne’ is titled for a mysterious biotech creature, the main character is really the ruined city the whole novel is set in. I have a particular fascination with ruined cities in fiction and am rather a connoisseur of them. My favourites include fantastical near-empty ruins ([b:Gormenghast|258392|Gormenghast (Gormenghast, #2)|Mervyn Peake|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480786154s/258392.jpg|3599885]; [b:Viriconium|304217|Viriconium|M. John Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347891771s/304217.jpg|295248]), dreamlike chaotically crowded nameless cities ([b:In the Country of Last Things|19486|In the Country of Last Things|Paul Auster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328287715s/19486.jpg|1010901]; [b:The Unconsoled|40117|The Unconsoled|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342193138s/40117.jpg|6372970]), and hellish urban battlefields of WWII ([b:Life and Fate|88432|Life and Fate|Vasily Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320447178s/88432.jpg|2435598]; [b:The Kindly Ones|3755250|The Kindly Ones|Jonathan Littell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347999215s/3755250.jpg|2916549]). Those six fictional and fictionalised cities are evoked so intensely, often frighteningly, that the reader is trapped there with the characters. An impressive feat for a writer to pull off, and unfortunately not one that ‘Borne’ manages. I had no sense of the unnamed city as a place, just as a series of specific locales. I liked the weird biotech that infested everything, however the city itself didn’t didn’t have the dreadful looming presence it should have. (I had a similar issue with [b:The Vorrh|16071377|The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy, #1)|Brian Catling|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1349600836s/16071377.jpg|42459978]’s underwhelming forest.) This prevented me from really getting into the novel, as plot and characterisation were rather subsumed by setting. It surprised me, actually, as Vandermeer’s [b:Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy|22752442|Area X The Southern Reach Trilogy (Southern Reach, #1-3)|Jeff VanderMeer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1412547809s/22752442.jpg|42299018] has a wonderfully creepy sense of encroaching spatial weirdness. That was much more rural than urban, though.

I also expected ‘Borne’ to examine questions of personhood in greater depth; instead it was more than anything a survival narrative. I was engaged enough to keep reading, without feeling particularly invested in what happened to Rachel and Wick, or indeed Borne. I was most interested in the biotech weirdness, especially Mord the Bear of Death, and what the so-called Company thought they were doing. I assume they had a similar business plan to the Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil movies: 1. Develop deadly technologies, 2. Unleash them, 3. Destroy civilisation and kill nearly everyone, 4. Profit?? In any event, ‘Borne’ was diverting without being especially thought-provoking. Also the ending was entirely too neat and tidy. ( )

It felt...anticlimactic. Two traditional powers in a ruined city and a strange creature, Borne, all revolving around the main character, Rachel.


The Magician was played up to be a force for Mord, but she seemed bumbling and unimpressive. There were some foreboding moments, but nothing really materialized and her final scene didn't do much for me. The battle between Borne and Mord was also played up, but stayed mostly in the background.


I wish there had been more of a connection between the main plot and the subplots that developed. Ultimately, I felt like there were some easy wins and a lot of loose ends. ( )

A lost bet ( )

Wow.

I am a fan of the author, this is a good story, and VanderMeer should be just the guy to handle post-apocalyptic biotech, but I didn't think the story moved well with VanderMeer-sentences hanging on it. ( )

Reading Jeff VanderMeer is like stumbling in a haze down an unfamiliar path. You are exposed to many things that defy common understanding and comprehension. Yet VanderMeer challenges you to accept what you cannot fathom. ( )

This book has the same sort of ambiguous weirdness that I loved in Annihilation. However to me it lacked an actual story to pull me through. It seemed that the focal characters were just thrashing around trying to survive, not chasing a goal or trying to solve a mystery. I'm going to read reviews of the following books carefully before deciding whether to read them. ( )

3.5 stars

My level of appreciation for the author’s writing talent and imagination was higher than my enjoyment of the reading experience. This book was weirder than my usual choices, and I have rather weird tastes. I’ve seen Vandermeer’s worldbuilding described as “immersive,” and I agree with that assessment. You have to live in the book for a while before things make any kind of sense, and at first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put in the time. I can see why people got frustrated and didn’t finish it. But a good friend loved this book, and so I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did. It all comes together eventually, and although I didn’t understand—and was surprised by—how things concluded, after Borne and Mord’s battle I still liked the ending.
And I loved Borne.
Now that I’ve gotten a feel for his writing style, I would read more of Vandermeer’s work. ( )

What a weird book, I love Jeff VanderMeer's writing. Didn't top the Southern Reach trilogy, but really fascinating and entertaining. ( )

Did not finish. Boring, meandering, drags on and on. Had some cool ideas and concepts but just went nowhere ( )

I didn't finish this not because it wasn't compelling or well written, but because it was so goddamn grim. I just couldn't deal. ( )

This is my current favorite book (July 2018). I enjoyed the traditional narrative approach on the world he set up in his non-traditional narrative books. I loved borne and was very attached to him and his relationship with his mom by the end. Also, giant flying bear was awesome! ( )

Based on a copy from NetGalley.

So weird! So good! Read it! Just read all of Jeff VanderMeer. ( )

Well written and weird as f*ck (though what did I expect from a book I picked up on a list of the new weird) ( )

This was fucking awesome. ( )

It seems fitting to finish this book on mother's day, one of the most beautiful paeans to motherhood
Mostly good, I kind of thought it should have ended after part 2 because the 3rd section was not as interesting to me, all in all very melodramatic, kind of like one of those horse girl movies but instead of a horse its a blob.

kind of felt like it was in the same universe as book of phoenix by nnedi okorafor ( )

Two days after finishing Borne, the latest read in my Vandermeer streak, and I am still not okay because I have all the feels for an inhuman murderous squid tentacle monster.

I'll try and break down what this book is about, with only minimal spoilers.

BORNE is a personal story of found families, lost children, broken homes, and couples trying to "make it work" against the odds.

BORNE is an epic story about monsters, humanity, and the incredible struggle of people who wish to be good but cannot stop being evil.

BORNE is a science fantasy story about a post-apocalyptic world overrun by biotech/wetware, all of it as beautiful and ingenious as it is insane and deadly.

BORNE is everything I look for in a speculative fiction novel, and if you are a fan of this genre, you cannot afford to miss this modern classic. ( )

I really tried hard to like this. I got about one-third of the way through and realized I was just forcing myself to read on because my best friend read it and gave it 4 stars. I tried, but it was not enjoyable to me. ( )

An interesting novel, but not really my cup of tea. There are so many ways I could describe this book: weird, imaginative, unsettling, dark. The world building is excellence and I can see why this author and this style of futuristic fiction has attracted readers. Still, this just wasn't the book for me and I struggled to finish it. ( )

I just adored Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (see here). His ability to create a genre-defying, strange but real feeling version of our world is unparalleled, and he does it again with Borne. The setting is in the future after some kind of devastating event, involving the Company – a mysterious organisation somewhat akin to the Southern Reach Authority – that has unleashed havoc on the area, in the particular form of a giant flying bear known as Mord, the result of a biotech project gone wrong.

As the novel opens, Rachel, a scavenger, has dared to climb onto the sleeping bear, and she spots a small green globe, a piece of biotech stuck on his fur and she takes it home. She keeps it in her quarters, christening it Borne.

And Borne grows, moves, starts eating the lizards and insects around the place, and then Borne starts to talk and absorb knowledge from Rachel and books. Borne can morph shape, size, smell, but Borne also needs to feed. Borne begins to pester Rachel to go outside. Her partner Wick can’t understand her growing parental-type attachment to the creature, while gradually Borne’s hidden capabilities start to become clearer.

Meanwhile the environment outside is growing more unsafe every day. Mord now has biotech ‘proxies’, vicious, killing mini-Mords, and Borne has to save Rachel’s life from them. Also the Magician, another dealer is expanding her domain, and the Balcony Cliffs where Rachel and Wick live is perilously close.

Vandermeer manages to construct a touching coming of age story for Borne, alongside a futuristic thriller that is full of the fantastic and the horrors of what really happened deep inside the Company. Borne tries hard to be good for Rachel, and she is rather resistant to acknowledging his true nature, unlike Wick who thinks that Borne could destroy them all. The tension between Borne – Rachel and Rachel – Wick help to build the suspense further.

Borne is a clever, thought-provoking, mind-bending and genre-defying novel – I adored it. Read my fuller review on my blog. https://annabookbel.net/rip-xiii-a-dystopian-sf-horror-fantasy ( )

Borne is part amoeba, part hydra and all curious. Also, very, VERY hungry.

Not happily-ever-after. But, a good ending, nevertheless. ( )

It is quite VanderMeerian, which is another way of saying it's hella weird. Not everything is explained, not everything makes sense, but it's quite engaging in a unsettling kind of way. So, there you have it. ( )

Extremely trippy piece of imaginative fiction. Brutal at times. ( )