This one is hard to rate. 
I was so excited to read this....And when I started reading it, oh how much I loved the very beginning, the characters, and the world-building, (I mean there's a flying bear-how rad is that?!) yet, after awhile, I felt this just really dragged and then with the constant secrets-like nothing was answered till like 94 % in the book-which was just a little too long to have anything revealed in the little amount of book left.

Overall, a unique book; however, it was just a little too slow for me. 

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest opinion. My thanks to Jeff VanderMeer and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity.

Borne is Jeff VanderMeer’s first new novel since his Southern Reach trilogy. I was stunned by reading it, and I am not sure that I can really do it justice. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape: a nameless city that was first transformed by a biotech enterprise known only as the Company, and then abandoned when the Company broke down or abandoned the region (it is not entirely clear which). The Company itself seems to have come from elsewhere; perhaps it is (as the novel suggests at one point) a mechanism of “the future exploiting the past, or the past exploiting the future,” or “another version of Earth” enriching itself at the expense of this one. (The issue is not resolved, but I find it suggestive: it’s a far better version of Nick Land’s fantasy of capital as an alien parasite from the future). (The idea of the future exploiting its own past — which is our present — is one that I find especially compelling; something like this is also the premise of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers).

In any case, the city in which Borne is set is basically a desert; and there is nothing left but ruins, noxious chemicals, and the remnants of the Company’s biotech — much of which is mutated and broken. There are many dangers: polluted water, violent feral children, venomous beasts, and a gigantic flying bear named Mord who ravages and destroys whatever he cannot control. There doesn’t seem to be any exit from this hellscape: there are remembered past scenes, and the elsewhere from which the Company emerged, and to which it has presumably returned — but none of these are accessible to the characters in the world of the novel.

In this landscape, the novel’s narrator Rachel ekes out a living as a scavenger, venturing out into the ruins to find usable bits and pieces of abandoned stuff — anything that can either be eaten, put to work, or somehow repurposed. Her partner, Wick, is a broken man who used to work for the Company, and still manages to engineer working biotech from the fragments Rachel brings him: worms that, introduced under the skin, can clean and heal wounds; bugs that provide new memories, or erase old ones; “alcohol minnows” that can be swallowed to get you drunk. All this is background; Rachel meticulously describes it in a flat and direct manner. This is the given: that which must be taken for granted, the reality in front of her — even if she has fragmentary memories of a happier childhood, before the world was destroyed.

The novel’s landscape/background is vividly drawn, imposing, and indeed sobering — since VanderMeer is in fact warning us about how bad it can get if we continue down our current route of environmental catastrophe, and of using technology which has no end or rationale except subordinating everything in the world, and extracting maximum profits. However, at the same time VanderMeer is also warning us that this devastation isn’t the end — there is also the existential dread of surviving the end of the world, of living on in its aftermath, of having to outlive the ruination of everything that made living worthwhile. Of having to go on, and to discover that things can become even worse than what you thought was already the worst we could endure. As Rachel remarks at one point: “Apparently we’d been richer than we thought, to suffer such continual diminishment and still be alive.”

But all this is still only background. What really makes the book, what really impassions the reader (or, at least, me as a reader) is two things: Rachel’s voice; and the creature known as Borne, who gives the novel its title. As for the first: Rachel is a survivor, but this fact/condition is not romanticized (as it all too often is in dystopian fiction). Rachel’s voice is weary and matter of fact, even when she recounts the most bizarre and incredible things. There is no triumphalism in her; she is not any sort of savior. Surviving itself is the most that she can hope for; but survival always has its price, since the more you survive the more you suffer. The novel has a provisionally happy ending, but it is still one in which survival — even with something of an improvement in one’s circumstances — is tenuous and fragile, always subject to revocation, to new shocks and surprises. The desolation remains. There is no moment of self-congratulatory resilience.

As for the second: Borne is a bit of biotech that Rachel discovers one day. She initially refers to Borne as an “it”; but quickly she moves to referring to Borne as a “he.” At first, Borne is tiny, something “like a hybrid of sea anemone and squid: a sleek vase with rippling colors that strayed from purple toward deep blues and sea greens.” But as Borne grows, Rachel discovers that he can change his shape at will, and mimic or impersonate just about anyone and anything. Also, Borne learns to speak, and to read and write. Rachel at first raises him like a child; but soon she has to accept his independence from her guidance, as any parent must with any growing child. In any case, Borne is the novel’s richest and strangest creation. Along with Rachel, we come to love and admire him, for his childlike enthusiasm and wonder, as well as for the way he loves her back. But in the course of the novel, along with Rachel, we are ultimately forced to realize that — for all his beauty and lovability — Borne is also a monster, and a danger to survival.

Rachel insists on regarding Borne in human terms. She assures him over and over that he is a person, in the same way that human beings are persons. But she (and we, reading her narrative) are finally forced to recognize that Borne is not, after all, human; and that the “human” itself — whatever essential or merely contingent attributes we might assign to it — is not a viable construction in and of itself, but must always rely on — or be dependent upon, or find itself networked with — that which is not human, which is inhuman, and which cannot ever be humanized. This would be true even in the case (not envisioned in the novel, and probably never having existed) of a vital and unspoiled Nature; and it is all the more true in the denatured nature, the aggressively “humanized” nature, within which Rachel finds herself — and, I am inclined to say, within which we in the Anthropocene inevitably find ourselves. “Turn and face the strange” — as David Bowie sang, in what might well be the motto for all Weird Fiction; though especially for Weird Fiction today — much more than in the time of colonialism and of Lovecraft. How antiquated Lovecraft’s vision of alien powers appears today. Lovecraft mythologized an indifferent Nature, whose horror resided in the fact that it does not care for us, is not in any way concerned with us, and may well crush us out of simple negligence (rather than anything that can be moralized as “evil”). Today, Lovecraft’s cold materialist vision seems outmoded, and hopelessly naive; and it even works as a sort of consolation. The menace of Cthulhu is so much simpler than the actuality of systems that threaten us precisely because we are so intimately intertwined with them. VanderMeer has often, rightly, rejected comparisons of his work with Lovecraft’s; books like Borne (and like the Southern Reach and Ambergris trilogies) indeed forge a new path for Weird Fiction, away from Lovecraft’s outworn metaphysics and towards a new sense of how the inhuman impinges upon us, all the more so because it cannot be recuperated in human terms.

The Anthropocene means that “we” (human beings) have irreversibly altered the entire biosphere; but it also means that, in doing so, we have exposed ourselves, more fully and more nakedly than ever before, to the geological and biological forces that respond to us in ways that we cannot anticipate or control. This seems to me to be the core of what Jeff VanderMeer is exploring — and seducing us to recognize. In Borne, the material forces unleashed by the Company do not do what the Company wanted them to do, nor what anyone else might want them to do. These material forces have an impetus, and an intelligence, all their own. They have twisted, both for good and for ill, into strange and ungainly patterns that stretch well beyond us — and that may continue, with their own interests and desires, even when we are gone. As Rachel says, very near the end, the animal descendants of the Company’s mutant creations “will outstrip all of us in time, and the story of the city will someday be their story, not ours.” This is the point to which Borne brings us, and the prospect with which it leaves us. We live in an ongoing catastrophe; but we may be able to outlive it, or to maintain ourselves beyond it. The novel leaves us with a diminished world, but one in which the worst destructive forces have been defeated (or have just played themselves out), and in which we can perhaps indulge hope for a yet more distant future, beyond our own extinction, in which things might at least be slightly better, or even (these are the last two words of the novel) “truly beautiful.”

In a devastated city, a young woman named Rachel carefully climbs up the side of a gigantic, sleeping bear in order to scavenge for useful biotech components. She finds something about the size of her fist that reminds her of a sea anemone and brings it to the crumbling building she calls home. She names it Borne and becomes strangely attached to it as it grows and learns to speak. Eventually, this being becomes something/someone that changes the future of her ruined city. 
This world that Vandermeer has created is filled with amazing creatures of all sorts, human, animal and biotech. It is rich with detail and I found myself fully immersed in it almost immediately. I felt an affinity for the well developed and complex main characters, which made their perils more suspenseful. I was especially fond of Borne, who was always asking, "Am I a person?" I'd definitely say yes. Although this world was wildly different, I was easily able to suspend my disbelief and accept the bizarre events that unfolded. 
I enjoyed this book very much and recommend it highly. I had a hard time putting it down. I hope there will be sequels as I'm still haunted by this world and wondering about the future of this city and how Rachel and her friends will fare.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Tired of the YA dystopian books that have over saturated the market these past few years? VanderMeer brings in a breath of fresh air to the dystopian genre (not YA) with this novel about environmentalism, pollution, genetic engineering, and parenting. The setting is reminiscent of Area X in his Southern Reach trilogy.

Jeff VanderMeer has a very specific writing style, which I found pretentious and tedious when I read Annihilation. However, it worked for me in this book. Another reviewer mentioned it having to do with the fact that there's an emotional center and I have to agree completely.

While the landscape and environment play a large role in the book, the main focus of the story is on the characters. Rachel, Wick, and Borne (as well as the Magician and Mord) and their relationships are what set this apart from Annihilation.

VanderMeer manages to capture the mood he seems to like for his books, but this time succeeds in creating characters to care about. You need to know and care about the relationships to figure out the mysteries scattered throughout.

The fight scenes aren't over written, but detailed enough for those who like that sort of thing.

4.5 stars rounds to 5.

Just as it is almost impossible to describe the plot of this novel, I can't explain why it touched me so much. Set in an apocalyptic landscape dominated by a gigantic bear called Mord, this is the story of Rachel, a scavenger who finds Borne. He is not human, but he is a person. And/or a weapon. Or not. Rachel teaches Borne everything she can, and it's in these conversations that lies the heart of this book. Borne asks her questions, much like a child would, and the beauty, sadness and poignancy of these dialogues make this an outstanding book. But I'm making it sound like it's all talk, and it's not. The action is also outstanding. Some parts are unbearably suspenseful (it may have something to do with bears), and so well written that you can feel the heat pounding on your head, the thirst, the panic... Now I'm making it sound too serious, but it is also funny sometimes. Some parts are hard to read, but the story is also full of compassion. Borne the novel, as Borne the character, is full of contradictions and it's worth getting to know. Five stars.

"Am I a weapon?" An existential question asked by a biotech artifact blob that a scavenger named Rachel finds on the fur of a three-story bear, named Mord - trust me, Vandermeer makes sense of this, immediately. This artifact is relatedly named "Borne" by Rachel and the two become the central real and artificial characters of Vandermeer's latest offering of speculative fiction and insanely-imaginative, dystopian, world-building. As Rachel's relationship with Borne progresses throughout the book, Vandermeer takes us through the sad backstory of Rachel's childhood and her current survival in a never-named ruined city with an interesting juxtaposition of an infantile organism discovering his own purpose for being. This leads to incredible discoveries by Rachel about Borne's identity and capabilities and becomes an amazing story of how many paternal instincts never cease to innately be, even in times of necessary individualism and survival in a world in literal ruins, with death at every turn or consumption.

In the book, Vandermeer keeps the ruination of the city as a continuing never-fully-revealed backstory that is told in bits and pieces along with vagaries about the agency of its demise, simply referred to as, "The Company." Past transgressions by The Company led to development of biotech in innumerable forms that can only possibly come together in true Vandermeer fashion, prose and world-building. The Company, at its developmental end, developed a bear named Mord to maintain order and ends-up wreaking total havoc and destruction on the city and, as bioengineering is always feared to do, turns Mord into a three-story, blood thirsty bear that has other capabilities that would seem silly in any other story, but completely appropriate in this one.

Vandermeer does not disappoint in this story, and although not as descript in his world-building as he was in his Southern Reach Trilogy, it does not leave the reader wanting in terms of perspective and context. There is little dystopian banality here as the city's ruination at the hands (inferentially) of The Company and the reader's imagination will depict the perfect scenes of Rachel's and Borne's plight. With biotech being the prominent makeup of the character's sustenance and doom, you can't help but imagine what a world like that would look like by the end - That was a great takeaway that I took from each scene.

As for Mord, he comes and goes throughout the story, but is never out of sight of the characters or the central plot. I think Vandermeer's obsession with bears has always been brought to his books in the most imaginative and terrifying ways, as was the case in The Third Bear and Komodo. The Third Bear has always been one of my favorites of Vandermeer's and I had a chance to tell him that at one of his readings during his Southern Reach tour. He said if I liked that one, then I'd like the bear in his next one. I anticipated that it would be just as nefarious and terrifying, and he was right. Let's hope he's still that into bears when he sits down to write the next one. 

I received Borne as an ARC and it has been the #1 book on my wishlist for quite a while. I thank the publisher for eventually allowing me to have a shot at it. The experience was not lost on me and this book will not be lost on anyone else who is a Vandermeer and speculative fiction fan.

Quirky, funny at times, existential in its narrative, with a good POV character and good support from the others. This was not a thrilling exploration like "Annihilation" but was still very satisfying. I find the author's writing very relaxing and immersive, with just the right amount of world-building and the rest of the details left to the reader's imagination to fill in. The pacing and plotting and level of conflict are always good, and the trade-offs between internal monologue, dialogue, backstory, and exposition seem just right.

Vandermeer, the author the Southern Reach trilogy, has proven again what an extraordinary imagination he has.  In a book that I would broadly categorize as post-apocalyptic science fiction horror, Vandermeer creates a multilayered female lead and a fascinating biotech character who went straight to my heart.  Once past the first few pages, necessary for getting one's bearings in this bizarre reality, I think most readers will react as I did and be unable to turn to anything else until they've read the last page.

As a child, Rachel survived the inundation and destruction of her island nation and then many years in refugee camps.  Her parents are now dead, and she has been in the City for 6 years.  "City" is a euphemism, for little is left of a previously large and inhabited place, devastated by the biotech creations of the Company.  This shadowy group unleashed on the City the results of its many failed experiments, some violent and poisonous, ending in the Company's own destruction.   Most horrendous of their creations is Mord, a multi-story-high bear-like creature which rampages through the city, or flies over it, eating and destroying whatever he finds.  Most water is poisonous and there is little food.  Part of the city is run by the Magician, who continues to create biotech in her quest to kill Mord.  Rachel lives in a warren of corridors and rooms on a hillside, aided in her survival by Wick, a biotech engineer himself who teaches her to develop ways to hide their entrances from those outside.  While Wick works on creating enough food for them to live and medicine so that he does not die, Rachel scavenges in the city's ruins, bringing home anything she finds of interest.  One day she comes upon what appears to be a fist-sized ocean plant clinging to the sleeping Mord, whose fur often collects oddities on his travels.  Rachel names the thing Borne (and decides it's a male) and refuses to turn him over to Wick, not realizing for a few days that he can move on his own and speak.  Borne can also shape-shift, and his growth and learning take place at such an astounding rate that within a few months he's coming and going to the outside world on his own, doing things Rachel cannot discover.  He constantly asks for assurance that's he's a "person", never quite trusting Rachel's answers.  He eats literally anything (furniture, spiders, other living and inanimate objects).  Rachel and Wick's relationship suffers from her attention to Borne and from Wick's antipathy towards him, but events in the City are even more dangerous, as the Magician makes her move against Mord with her weapons and hoards of biotech creations.  

The story is full of delightful surprises, but most fascinating is the character of the ever-changing Borne, whose nature is directly opposed to the nurture Rachel provides.  Their relationship, and how it affects the future of the City, is what compels the action to a satisfying conclusion that answers many questions and brings the memorable Borne's life work to a dramatic crescendo.  Very highly recommended.

I am an Area X superfan, so when heard about Borne I jumped on the opportunity to get the galley. I received a copy of Borne by Jeff Vandermeer from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. 

At the start of the book, the reader meets a woman named Rachel who lives with a man named Wick. These two are scavengers, surviving in a city basically toppled and ruined by Mord, a giant, angry, flying bear created by something called The Company and loosed upon the city years ago. Also vying for control of the city is a person called The Magician who employs bands of altered children to do his/her dirty work. While Rachel is scavenging for food and biotech parts one day, she finds a little blob of living material stuck in Mord's fur. She bring this blob home and becomes strangely attached to it, so she won't allow Wick to use it for parts. She ends up calling it Borne. After this, Borne begins to grow and change, and Rachel and Wick must navigate this new issue along with trying to survive in their desolate landscape. Before the collapse Wick worked for the company - can Rachel trust him? Does he know things he's not telling her? Will they survive? Where did Mord and The Magician come from? What is Borne? How the heck will this all end!?

This is a story not only about survival and giant biotech flying bears, but about what it means to be human, or even living. Revelations about The Company are made throughout that rocked me to the core as a reader - HOW COULD THEY DO THAT!? I spent a lot of time pondering what work Wick did at The Company and what, if anything, he had to do with the creation of Mord (and/or Borne). Was Wick a good guy or a bad guy? These biotech creatures - what (or who) are they made of? Why?

I also spent a lot of my time while reading Borne totally enraptured with the whole thing. I never wanted it to end - I felt like I could have lived in this universe of uncertainty (even though it was a pretty rough place to be). Vandermeer's descriptions of biotech creatures and the ruined city landscape are positively mesmerizing, just like his writing about creatures and landscapes in Area X. His descriptions of Borne make the reader fascinated, enthralled, and eventually enamored with the creature (my feelings about Borne as the reader seem to parallel Rachel's). I was so attached to Borne that I, much like Rachel, would get upset when Wick would say Borne was dangerous or question his motives. Rachel and Wick's relationship is at times loving and at times pugnacious - fairly realistic for a post-apocalyptic couple, I'd say, as they spend a fair amount of time fighting, which seems par for the course if you're starving and always being attacked by bears. 

I would also like to add that I appreciate that Jeff Vandermeer's protagonists are frequently minorities - and frequently minorities with various intersecting identities. This protagonist, Rachel, is a woman of color who has also been a refugee her whole life and we see her experiences reflected in her decisions and actions toward Borne and Wick. 

Overall I loved this novel, didn't want it to end, and can't recommend it enough!

Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer, May 2017
I’m a huge fan of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and readers familiar with his style know to expect that they will be in the dark as much as his characters. The novel’s protagonist, Rachel, is a scavenger who discovers a creature she names Borne. Rachel is unsure if Borne is animal or plant, but nurtures her foundling as they both struggle to survive in an apocalyptic word where bizarre biotech animals roam. VanderMeer’s creativity knows no boundary in this toxic world, ruined by The Company and climate change. His world-building is filled with a nightmarish giant flying bear, Mord, mutated children with fangs and wings, and terrifying technology. Part horror, part sci-fi, and completely consuming, this is a page turner fans will not want to miss.