Jeff Vandermeer is known for his surreal and unsettling stories. Look no further than his Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), which told the story of a region of the country cut off from civilization, where nature is left to reclaim the space in strange and otherworldly ways. In his new novel Borne, Vandermeer revisits some of the environmental themes of those books, but he turns out an impressive, post-apocalyptic tale about a young woman and a bizarre, intelligent blob that she discovers while scavenging. Oh, and there’s a giant, flying bear that terrorizes the city’s inhabitants.
Borne follows Rachel, a scavenger who spends her days searching a ruined city for food and cast-off pieces of biotech left behind by a mysterious company. Along with her partner, Wick, she ekes out a meager existence in an abandoned apartment complex known as Balcony Cliffs, while trying to avoid the attention of Mord, a giant bear that flies above the city. (He was responsible for its destruction years ago.) It’s while she’s out searching that she discovers a lump of… something, stuck to Mord’s fur, which she takes home and names Borne.
Vandermeer excels at strange, immersive worlds
Vandermeer excels at strange, immersive worlds. His city is a weird, artificial ecosystem in which bioengineered organisms live alongside buildings, people, and pollution, finding their place in this strange new hierarchy. Borne first appears to be little more than a plant, but soon begins to move and speak — and grow at an unsettling pace. To Wick’s dismay, Rachel begins teaching Borne to survive while instilling a sense of right and wrong. But as Borne keeps growing (in size and intelligence), so does its hunger. It hunts down small creatures in the Balcony Cliffs, and even people who invade their space, absorbing them into itself, where, frighteningly, Borne says that they’re not dead, but living inside him.
As Rachel raises Borne, a war is brewing between Mord and his diminutive, bear-like minions, and The Magician, a former employee of the Company who possesses strange, biotech-enhanced powers. Vandermeer has often drawn inspiration from humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and this fight is between two giant forces: one a chaotic force of nature, and the other a calculating, malevolent individual who mutates her followers into grotesque creatures. Borne’s entry into this world upends the balance between these two forces, the proverbial chicken coming home to roost. Borne is a force of nature in its own right, but it’s not of nature.