Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Los Angeles Times, The
Boston Globe, PopSugar, Financial Times, Chicago Review of Books,
Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Thrillist, Book Riot,
National Post (Canada), Kirkus and Publishers Weekly
**
From the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy comes Jeff VanderMeer's
Borne, a story about two humans and two creatures.**
"Am I a person?" Borne asked me.
"Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a
weapon, too."
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a
ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is
dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company--a
biotech firm now derelict--and punished by the unpredictable predations
of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a
run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own
homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him
home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump--plant or
animal?--but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the
marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising
seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can
kill you. Yet, against her instincts--and definitely against Wick's
wishes--Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to
speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so
broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see
beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness
she can ill afford.
"He was born*, but I had* borne him."
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the
city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the
Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping
in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious
her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In
the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
