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Borne
(Borne #1)
by
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 an
...more
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Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
April 25th 2017
by MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Posted at Heradas Review
VanderMeer’s writing is engaging, difficult, and worth the effort required to read. It takes me a little longer to finish his novels than I feel like it should. It’s the kind of writing that makes me a better reader. It’s challenging and uncomfortable. Something about his prose makes me have to go back and reread sentences to make sure I understood what was being said. It reminds me of William Gibson’s writing in that way. Of course, VanderMeer and Gibson write in entirel ...more
VanderMeer’s writing is engaging, difficult, and worth the effort required to read. It takes me a little longer to finish his novels than I feel like it should. It’s the kind of writing that makes me a better reader. It’s challenging and uncomfortable. Something about his prose makes me have to go back and reread sentences to make sure I understood what was being said. It reminds me of William Gibson’s writing in that way. Of course, VanderMeer and Gibson write in entirel ...more

We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.
oh, jeff vandermeer…. to my shame, i have yet to read the southern reach trilogy, although i own all three, and have owned them for a good long time now. and while we’re on the subject of my many personal failings, i actually own a TON of his books, including three copies of city of saints and madmen, in at least two different versions. many of these are in storage right now, after bedbug-overreaction 2015 sent so many boo ...more
oh, jeff vandermeer…. to my shame, i have yet to read the southern reach trilogy, although i own all three, and have owned them for a good long time now. and while we’re on the subject of my many personal failings, i actually own a TON of his books, including three copies of city of saints and madmen, in at least two different versions. many of these are in storage right now, after bedbug-overreaction 2015 sent so many boo ...more

Holy crap on a cracker!! Mind blown!!

Mel 🖤🐺❤️ ...more

Mel 🖤🐺❤️ ...more

”The closer I approached, the more Borne rose up through Mord’s fur, became more like a hybrid sea anemone and squid: a sleep vase with rippling colors that strayed from purple toward deep blues and sea greens. Four vertical ridges slid up the sides of its warm and pulsating skin. The texture was as smooth as waterworn stone, if a bit rubbery. It smelled of beach reeds on lazy summer afternoons and, beneath the sea salt, of passionflowers. Much later, I realized it would have smelled different t
...more

Sep 15, 2017
Bradley
rated it
it was amazing
Shelves:
2017-shelf,
sci-fi,
fanboy-goes-squee,
worldbuilding-sf,
fantasy,
biopunk,
dystopia-yes-pls
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 imaginatio ...more
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 imaginatio ...more

Pros:
Prose
Imagery
Imagination
World building
Backstory
Cons:
Pacing.
I absolutely adored many things about this book but I think ultimately I admire Jeff VanderMeer's craft more than I enjoyed reading it.
He has a brilliant way with words and the pictures he paints are vivid, frightening, sad, and scary. I enjoy the fact that he is not only clever but ultimately trusts the reader to be clever, too. He lets you fill in the blanks yourself, he doesn't dumb down the story and he knows you will follow ...more
Prose
Imagery
Imagination
World building
Backstory
Cons:
Pacing.
I absolutely adored many things about this book but I think ultimately I admire Jeff VanderMeer's craft more than I enjoyed reading it.
He has a brilliant way with words and the pictures he paints are vivid, frightening, sad, and scary. I enjoy the fact that he is not only clever but ultimately trusts the reader to be clever, too. He lets you fill in the blanks yourself, he doesn't dumb down the story and he knows you will follow ...more

Gloriously bizarre. The world building is incredible. Within the first night I started reading this, I had nightmares. There's an icky flying bear that is sort of a GMO cautionary tale. The biotech is wicked (heehee, there's a pun in there, but you have to read the book to get it). This novel grows as you read it, just like it's titular character Borne.
...more

I’ve wanted to read VanderMeer for some time and my plan was to start with the Southern Reach trilogy, his most known work up to date. Then Borne came along and, after consulting with GR friends, I decided that the most recent novel would be the better place to start my incursion in the author’s oeuvre as it is a standalone story.
Borne has many of the usual dystopian elements: a post-apocalyptic world, characters fighting for survival, raw behavior feelings and, a nostalgia for the former times ...more
Borne has many of the usual dystopian elements: a post-apocalyptic world, characters fighting for survival, raw behavior feelings and, a nostalgia for the former times ...more

Jun 06, 2017
William
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
extraordinary-books
Ten Stars
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Exquisite and extraordinary... A poignant and terrible vision, an astounding dystopia, so plausible, so actually probable now. This is a book you LIVE, not just read. This is a life you anticipate.
All through this extraordinary and wonderful book, I found myself nearly in tears as I watched Rachel (my "grand-daughter" in this story) suffer and struggle in the wreck of a world we are creating for her now. I find Rachel’s terrible future ...more
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Exquisite and extraordinary... A poignant and terrible vision, an astounding dystopia, so plausible, so actually probable now. This is a book you LIVE, not just read. This is a life you anticipate.
All through this extraordinary and wonderful book, I found myself nearly in tears as I watched Rachel (my "grand-daughter" in this story) suffer and struggle in the wreck of a world we are creating for her now. I find Rachel’s terrible future ...more

There's something very fantastical about the dystopian world Jeff VanderMeer creates in Borne; this is especially evident in the novel's title character. It's interesting to see Borne develop through the protagonist's eyes. However, for all the discussion and questioning about how the world came to be filled with biological mutations, like Borne, I feel there is a lack of depth to this exploration. I may be overly critical here because I kept being reminded of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (w
...more

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
...more

4.5ish stars.
Post-apocalypse but instead of zombies or raiders or corrupt governments, this is full-on wackiness. Gigantic flying bear, Mord, is Lord of the city and has a brood of regular terrifying bears that act as proxies for carrying out his royal bearship's horrific rule. Little kids with bee eyes and wings and all sorts of other gruesome "modifications" run around maiming and killing for fun. The city has been wasted of its natural resources and survival is only possible by scavenging th ...more
Post-apocalypse but instead of zombies or raiders or corrupt governments, this is full-on wackiness. Gigantic flying bear, Mord, is Lord of the city and has a brood of regular terrifying bears that act as proxies for carrying out his royal bearship's horrific rule. Little kids with bee eyes and wings and all sorts of other gruesome "modifications" run around maiming and killing for fun. The city has been wasted of its natural resources and survival is only possible by scavenging th ...more

Jan 27, 2017
Jessica Woodbury
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sci-fi-fantasy,
arc-provided-by-publisher
I really enjoyed ANNIHILATION, the first of the Southern Reach books, but found my interest waned after that for reasons I could never quite put my finger on. VanderMeer is great at mood but I felt like there was something I needed that was missing, particularly in the later books. So I was very interested to read BORNE while also approaching it with a little trepidation.
BORNE was a really satisfying read and also helped me pinpoint the thing that I'd been missing in the Southern Reach novels: a ...more
BORNE was a really satisfying read and also helped me pinpoint the thing that I'd been missing in the Southern Reach novels: a ...more

This was my second book by this author and, in my opinion, it was less weird but still immensely rich in details.
We are in a nameless city. The city once housed a company (also just called "the Company") that created biotech. We learn that wars and global warming must have laid waste to this world, aided by the Company's experiments. Mord, a massive flying bear that was also created by the Company and that is more than five storeys high, is terrorising the survivors in the city.
Only three of th ...more
We are in a nameless city. The city once housed a company (also just called "the Company") that created biotech. We learn that wars and global warming must have laid waste to this world, aided by the Company's experiments. Mord, a massive flying bear that was also created by the Company and that is more than five storeys high, is terrorising the survivors in the city.
Only three of th ...more

3.5 stars. Dreamy, weird, curious, slow, meditative, amusing, beautiful, violent....Borne is all this, and a lot of tentacles. Definitely reminiscent of the author's Southern Reach trilogy in terms of the dystopia, environmental concerns, strange creatures, and the brutality coupled with the quiet, wistful, and almost remote and distanced feel of the narration.
...more

2.5 stars
A dystopian novel featuring a giant flying bear named Mord and a plant/person(?) named Borne shouldn’t have been so soporific that it literally put me to sleep nightly for two weeks. But hey, at least I’m now feeling well rested!
The best part was the reveal of the letter. But I don’t think it was worth the effort/time to get to that point. Pass.
A dystopian novel featuring a giant flying bear named Mord and a plant/person(?) named Borne shouldn’t have been so soporific that it literally put me to sleep nightly for two weeks. But hey, at least I’m now feeling well rested!
The best part was the reveal of the letter. But I don’t think it was worth the effort/time to get to that point. Pass.

Five Forms of Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne
1. The Imaginative Dystopia
Borne is set in a dystopian world unlike anything else I’ve read (except, perhaps, other Vandermeer). Rachel, our lead, is a scavenger who hunts for food and supplies in a surreal landscape in order to keep her and her romantic partner alive. There are feral children with wasps that allow them to see flying about in their eye sockets. In a world where biologically engineered organisms (biotech) have been allowed to run wild, every e ...more
1. The Imaginative Dystopia
Borne is set in a dystopian world unlike anything else I’ve read (except, perhaps, other Vandermeer). Rachel, our lead, is a scavenger who hunts for food and supplies in a surreal landscape in order to keep her and her romantic partner alive. There are feral children with wasps that allow them to see flying about in their eye sockets. In a world where biologically engineered organisms (biotech) have been allowed to run wild, every e ...more

Since Annihilation I became a fan of Vandermeer. His writing is not easy, to me it really requires effort to read but I think it really worth it. I found myself reading a paragraph two or three times so I can absorb the meaning. It’s for sure an above-average reading experience.
Borne happens in a post-apocalyptic world. The world as we know is ruined, rivers are poisoned, genetically engineered creatures roam the cities, even govern them and people are just trying to survive every day. Same as S ...more
Borne happens in a post-apocalyptic world. The world as we know is ruined, rivers are poisoned, genetically engineered creatures roam the cities, even govern them and people are just trying to survive every day. Same as S ...more

Trust me: you are going to be hearing about this book for the rest of the year. It’s one of the best Sci-Fi/Dystopian hybrids to come out in years. Fans of VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach trilogy are going to eat this up. The book follows a scavenger named Rachel during the recent apocalypse. She and her fellow survivor Wick are threatened by Mord: an impossibly large (flying) bear who destroys everything in his wake. One day, Rachel finds a strange creature embedded in Mord’s fur. She becomes o
...more

Boy, I really struggled to maintain my interest in this book. I hasten to add this is not an indictment of the author or his tale; it just did not ‘click’ for me. As far as I can tell, and this is probably a major assumption given how deliberately opaque it is, ‘Borne’ is a typical quest fantasy dressed up in apocalyptic biopunk gear.
The quest is to find the headquarters of the so-called Company, whose origins and actions are shrouded in mystery, and which did or did not decimate the nameless ci ...more
The quest is to find the headquarters of the so-called Company, whose origins and actions are shrouded in mystery, and which did or did not decimate the nameless ci ...more

The dystopian reality of Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne is occupied by an enraged, giant flying bear named Mord that hunts and slaughters feral, sociopathic children in a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Imagine what it would take under those circumstances to come across something truly bewildering. When Rachel, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, discovers the being she names Borne while salvaging through the forest of fur on Mord’s sleeping body, she is unsure if it is a plant or animal or anythin
...more

2.5. This one is hard for me to rate. I am certainly an outlier here. The average rating is pretty high at 3.93. It took me quite a while to feel like I knew what the hell was going on in this (I think) post apocolyptic world. This is the 2nd book by VanDerMeer that's made me feel this way so I'm not sure if I'm just a dip or it's his writing style. I would have liked more back story as to why the world was in the state it was. I never felt very connected with the characters either. Maybe VanDer
...more

Finally a Vandermeer novel that I not only enjoyed reading, but understood. It has a start, middle and an end. It’s not a part of a trilogy pretending to be a complete book. It’s a full story, a great yarn and a scary look at a possible future for us.
For the first time, I am gripped by a JV novel, glued to the pages and the spine chilling story. Those in the know will know what I mean when [she] walks into the pool room and Wick is talking to Rachel. Even though I knew it was coming, it still se ...more
For the first time, I am gripped by a JV novel, glued to the pages and the spine chilling story. Those in the know will know what I mean when [she] walks into the pool room and Wick is talking to Rachel. Even though I knew it was coming, it still se ...more

You know what? Sometimes I start a book and I'm sure it's not for me, this is one of those times, but yet there was some niggling feeling that I should give this a fair chance, and keep reading, and I am really glad I did. Although this book falls into the New Weird category very aptly - it's completely a weird read - I found it grew much better as it went, and I ended up really quite enjoying the characters and their story. I will say, this is never going to be a book that works for everyone, i
...more

“There comes a moment when you witness events so epic you don’t know how to place them in the cosmos or in relation to the normal workings of a day. Worse, when these events recur, at an ever greater magnitude, in a cascade of what you have never seen before and do not know how to classify. Troubling because each time you acclimate, you move on, and, if this continues, there is a mundane grandeur to the scale that renders certain events beyond rebuke or judgment, horror or wonder, or even the...more

2 and a half stars. Maybe 3.
I'm not sure how to express my feelings on this book.
On the one hand, it's fascinating and well written with interesting characters, creatures and world.
On the other hand, I wish that more had been revealed sooner (and just... more). There are still too many secrets built into pretty language. Just tell me something. Answer a question or two. It's almost plot-less as well in a weird way. The reveals aren't really built up, and if the main character doesn't much car ...more
I'm not sure how to express my feelings on this book.
On the one hand, it's fascinating and well written with interesting characters, creatures and world.
On the other hand, I wish that more had been revealed sooner (and just... more). There are still too many secrets built into pretty language. Just tell me something. Answer a question or two. It's almost plot-less as well in a weird way. The reveals aren't really built up, and if the main character doesn't much car ...more

This hardcover edition of “Borne” by Jeff Vandermeer is the signed slip cased edition produced by Powell’s Books as an exclusive edition in their book line titled “Indispensable Subscribers”. The book states it is a first edition (2017) of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition.
Powell's subscription club (Indispensable Subscribers) delivers the best new books, with special attention to independent publishers. Signed editions. Inventive, original sets. Exclusive printings... Every six to eight we ...more
Powell's subscription club (Indispensable Subscribers) delivers the best new books, with special attention to independent publishers. Signed editions. Inventive, original sets. Exclusive printings... Every six to eight we ...more

Up through the first third of Borne, I was enjoying it as four stars, a fine delicate glass sculpture of a book. It wasn’t meaty, even then, but I liked the possibility of the setting, a post-apocalyptic wartorn city, filled with bio-engineered terrors running amok and ruled over by a Godzilla-style flying bear named Mord. I liked the cool distance of the narrator, Rachel the Scavenger, as she searched for goods caught in Mord’s fur, always fearful of his awakening. And then she finds something,
...more

Partially filled the Southern Reach-shaped hole in my heart. This is VanderMeer in his element, very Area X-esque - a scavenger working and co-surviving with her lover in a desolate, abandoned city full of trash and things reminiscent of a society, now only to be scavenged. VanderMeer masterfully builds his world such that we know what it now looked like, dark and grimy, and also what it used to be, and I could see that it was once shiny and futuristic (I do love them alcohol minnows).
The star ...more
The star ...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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BarringtonLibrary...: Borne - Jan/Feb 2021 | 2 | 7 | Mar 04, 2021 07:16AM | |
Questions about The ending | 9 | 586 | Apr 29, 2020 06:05PM | |
SciFi and Fantasy...: "Borne" by Jeff VanderMeer (BR) | 71 | 107 | Dec 24, 2019 10:49AM | |
Goodreads Librari...: Page number correction (9780008159214) | 2 | 17 | Feb 08, 2019 06:37AM |
NYT bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent novel, the national bestseller Borne, received wide-spread critical acclaim and his prior novels include the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). Annihilation won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, has been translat
...more
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—
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