Borne

Eigenlijk 4,5, maar geen 5 omdat het boek toch mogelijk iets te vreemd is om kado te doen...

Een reusachtige vliegende beer, een zeeanemoon die fors groeit (en blijkt te kunnen praten) worden met een Sport-Banden liefdesverhaal (eerder overlevingsverhaal) gemengd. De wereld zoals wij die kennen is min of meer vergaan, waarbij The Company een niet zo frisse rol speelt.
Doet in de verte wel wat denken aan een gitzwarte versie van de verhalen van Walter Moers. Ook zwarter dan Station Eleven, maar door de (letterlijk) fantastische elementen goed leesbaar.

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.

Highly imaginative and surreal in his storytelling and environments, as per Vandemeer's usual. As with some of his other novels, it is a slower start. But I think it is beneficial for the book as a whole.

5 word review:

So cute, then so dark.

If you've read a Jeff VanderMeer book before, you know what I mean when I say it's disorienting. VanderMeer's prose style is not so much dense as elliptical; oblique rather than straightforward, and you can't help but feel you've entered three chapters in and missed all the early exposition that sets up the story.

So it is with Borne, a novel set in an unspecified future post-apocalypse hellscape, one in which humans have messed about too adeptly with biotechnology and unleashed monsters. As with most stories of this ilk, humanity has been reduced to a paltry few, living as scavengers picking at the bones of civilization. They live in destroyed buildings, forests, valleys and wherever else they can make a meagre life, all the while dodging the monstrous bear, Mord and his proxy bears which seem to have no purpose other than rage-fuelled destruction. Did I mention that Mord, the bear, flies? And that his proxy bears are venomous?

So, yeah, it's strange, and it takes you on a complicated and weird journey through the remains of civilization with dark hints and glimpses at the causes of its collapse: the mysterious Company that seems to have been at the center of the aforementioned biotechnological meddling. The world, now filled with . . . creatures . . . is a land straight out of legend and myth.

In fact, I think that's what makes this book so interesting (and enjoyable). The legends and myths of our world have come down to us through hundreds of generations in a long, epoch-spanning game of broken telephone. We know that the stories of gods, demons, wondrous creatures, magic and all the other archetypal fantasy elements are the result of uncounted retellings around fires, at court, in villages, even in what we would now call nursery rhymes. What VanderMeer has done here is invert that model. In Borne the first-person narrator describes the mythic, fabulous events as she witnessed them. It's like we're at the birth of myth itself.

Which, come to think of it, is mirrored in the story of Borne, the creature cum Maguffin that begins as an unknown blob on the back of Mord and gradually evolves into . . . something. We witness its growth, see it acquire new powers that it brandishes like its many tentacles which, in case you missed the point, are like the many accretions of myths and legends that pile on over the generations, until the climactic, epic conclusion where Borne literally becomes . . . well, I'll leave it to you to see.

This, I think, is the value of the novel. The plot, such as it is, meanders (and owes a huge debt to Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy); the characters are barely fleshed out; the setting is straight out of the zombie movie playbook. What's left? What is the point? The birth, curation, and transmission of myth itself. We are meant to experience this story in the way those who came after its events would, hearing with wide-eyed wonder the story of monsters laying waste to the land (tip of the hat to the Welsh Arthurian legends of the great boar Trwyth), of magical beings (I mean, really, one character is called The Magician, for heaven's sake), of warriors and spirits and gods . . . it's Joseph Campbell and Jung and Eliot and Frye but rather than sitting in the lecture hall we're sitting around the fire ourselves.

So give it a read and think of it in terms of what it's trying to do rather than what is going on. VanderMeer writes strange, challenging books that raise a lot more questions than they resolve. That's good. He leaves space for his readers to suggest some of their own.

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.

It was a long book for the amount of stuff that happened and the characters never really developed that much.

3.5

Great worldbuilding - really excited to dig more into this “New Weird” genre that VanderMeer seems to be pioneering. Overall though, the story here didn't really do it for me

This was the first book by Jeff that I read, with my only previous familiarity with his work being the movie Annihilation. I absolutely loved his vision of this kind of apocalyptic world

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.

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.

This book is great and I love his writing style. I won't say much about the plot, except that there is a piece of the end I don't understand. Basically how it is able to be the end. So if someone gets the end, I'd appreciate an explanation. Either way, I really enjoyed this book.

I'm still not sure how many stars to give this book. There are many things I loved about it, but also some things I didn't like as much. This review will contain a few spoilers, which will be hidden under [SPOILER].

The mood of the book is superb, which is not surprising for a Jeff VanderMeer book. I've seen many people compare it with the Southern Reach trilogy, but I think it's different, at least it feels different.

I also liked the setting, the world building, although in times it felt a bit too real, and made me feel uneasy. I loved Rachel and Borne, I loved their interactions, even if I didn't always agree with Rachel's choices.

Jeff VanderMeer is capable of building a fictional world with very minimal description, which I particularly like, because I can't stand exposition. However, at times his descriptions seemed a bit too scarce, too a point that whenever I tried to imagine the city the story takes place in, I'd mostly “see” an empty plane. It could be just me, focusing too much on the details.

The following are going to be SPOILERS and they are the things I disliked about the book the most.

I really couldn't care less about Wick, or Rachel's relationship with him. Despite VanderMeer's best efforts to portray him in a multifaceted way, I always saw him as rather bland. And the fact that Rachel and Wick's relationship was the central axis of the story was something I couldn't relate to that much. Everything made sense through that prysm, including Borne.Which brings me to the second thing I hated - the ending. I understand how hard it was to Rachel to deal with her feeling for Borne when she learned he was a killer who couldn't stop killing. The first thought that'd came to my mind was to try to work with him on that, talk to him more, try to train him. It does seem futile, when I think about it, and perhaps it's all fueled by my wishful thinking and inability to accept the very premise of Borne. I don't believe in "good" or "evil", and think everyone has capacity for both, but they can always learn from their mistakes, change their behaviour. An idea that someone might not be able to change their habits, of it being impossible to save someone from their destructive self is probably something my brain cannot fully cope with. I grew up among humans, my brain is trained to understand humans, and although I consider Borne to be a person (of course he is - he's sentient!), he's not human, and he's not human to a significant extent.But this moral dilemma is not what I hate about the ending. The thing I hate is that after Borne had died, it didn't feel like a dilemma. Something in Rachel snapped, and it seemed as if she didn't care anymore, as if the feelings she had for him disappeared together with Mord. And the final blow to the heart was the coldness in the way she spoke about Borne after she had found him tiny, motionless, and brought him home. How resolved she was about ending he were he to start moving again.

Most of the book was incredibly well written and exciting to read. I couldn't put it down! But once I finished it, it didn't feel right. And it's funny - I'd given lesser books 4 stars just because I loved the ending. This time I liked most things but the ending, and it cost the book that extra start.

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.

It was OK. Maybe I just wasn't ready to jump into this other world and didn't get into it very much. It was good if you can focus on it but I just couldn't make that connection.

You can also find this review on my blog.

I had started reading Borne for the Reddit /r/books book club. I had been intending to read it anyway, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I first read VanderMeer when I picked up Annihilation in January, and then Authority in March, and I really enjoyed his writing style. I was impressed by how he was able to pull readers into such bizarre environments and weave such strange tales.

The first half of the book went by pretty quickly for me. There wasn't much of an introduction to the world itself and as a reader you found yourself thrust into it pretty quickly. It's a confusing environment – decimated city, giant flying bear, you get the idea – and it's difficult to orient yourself, but VanderMeer does a pretty good job of immersing you within it and revealing the context slowly.

The pacing was a bit off and I sort of lost interest in the second half of the book, which caused me to finish it a lot slower than I had intended. I became a bit too confused and it was hard to be invested in the story when I didn't understand what was going on. I really didn't understand the cause and effect of certain events, so I spent more time trying to figure out what had happened than I spent reacting to them emotionally.

The end pulled things together pretty well, but I had already been lost for long enough that it didn't redeem things for me. I was disappointed because it didn't really feel comparable to the first two thirds of the Southern Reach trilogy to me, but I think I also wasn't in the mindspace to read this kind of book right now, so take that with a grain of salt.

I definitely recommend this for other lovers of VanderMeer and sci-fi lovers in general, but it just didn't do it for me this time around.

Weird. Dystopian. Loved it

I found it very hard to resist the impression that the author must have lost a bet that forced him to create a story out of a randomly generated string of words/ideas but Vandermeer is so good, his writing so lucid that in the end it works extremely well.

Dull, longwinded and boring. So disappointing after the Southern Reach trilogy.

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?

There are parts of this book that are absolutely amazing, usually the more actiony sequences. Although I admire VanderMeer's melding of character-driven literary fiction and dystopian sci-fi, I'd really love to see him write a more traditional genre novel. I think it would be fantastic.

My struggle in reading and fully enjoying this novel came from the main character, Rachel. Rachel is a scavenger, scouring a dangerous wasteland for anything that will help her and her boyfriend Wick survive a little while longer. My problem with Rachel is that she is the most boring character in the book. Wick is a brooding and secretive bio-engineer/drug dealer. Rachel has a sentient shape-shifting plant thing named Borne. A giant flying murderous bear is battling a magician for control of the wasteland. The bear has even more murderous little bears and the magician has equally murderous modified children fighting for her. There's also a mysterious Company, the presumptive source of the apocalypse that led to this post-apocalyptic wasteland. But most of the novel focuses on Rachel and her attempts to act as a sort of parent to Borne.

I hate to say it, but I think I would have enjoyed this novel more if it had featured the alternating point of view structure (the Gone Girl, if you will) that I am otherwise growing tired of because ever other book is using it. I wanted to see more of the world of the novel, more of the giant murderous bear, more of the magician. But Rachel spends a great deal of the novel hiding in her apartment. This is perfectly understandable and believable (THERE'S A GIANT BEAR FLYING AROUND!), but it left me wanting more (HOW CAN THE GIANT BEAR FLY!?!)

There are parts of this book that are absolutely amazing, usually the more actiony sequences. Although I admire VanderMeer's melding of character-driven literary fiction and dystopian sci-fi, I'd really love to see him write a more traditional genre novel. I think it would be fantastic.

My struggle in reading and fully enjoying this novel came from the main character, Rachel. Rachel is a scavenger, scouring a dangerous wasteland for anything that will help her and her boyfriend Wick survive a little while longer. My problem with Rachel is that she is the most boring character in the book. Wick is a brooding and secretive bio-engineer/drug dealer. Rachel has a sentient shape-shifting plant thing named Borne. A giant flying murderous bear is battling a magician for control of the wasteland. The bear has even more murderous little bears and the magician has equally murderous modified children fighting for her. There's also a mysterious Company, the presumptive source of the apocalypse that led to this post-apocalyptic wasteland. But most of the novel focuses on Rachel and her attempts to act as a sort of parent to Borne.

I hate to say it, but I think I would have enjoyed this novel more if it had featured the alternating point of view structure (the Gone Girl, if you will) that I am otherwise growing tired of because ever other book is using it. I wanted to see more of the world of the novel, more of the giant murderous bear, more of the magician. But Rachel spends a great deal of the novel hiding in her apartment. This is perfectly understandable and believable (THERE'S A GIANT BEAR FLYING AROUND!), but it left me wanting more (HOW CAN THE GIANT BEAR FLY!?!)

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.

I read mine on my Nook, but whatevs.

Surreal weirdness with domineering bears, biotech, people who aren't people, and a plant who isn't a plant.

Oh, gods, I cried. More than once. And when I wasn't crying, my nose was tingling with almost-tears. Maybe I'm just a weirdo.