Children with body modifications wreak havoc where they can, and a host of normal bears-normal in size, but breathing fire-do Mord’s bidding. Others, like Rachel, scavenge among the ruins. There’s little left in the blasted landscape to oppose the bear, though a mysterious character, the Magician, has been marshalling forces toward that end. His creators at the Company, helpless to control him, have turned into his acolytes, subservient to the monster they’ve created. Mord seems to obey no law other than his own impulses, ravaging the city at will, flying high and then crashing into buildings, destroying them. He is enormous-three stories high on his side, as Rachel climbs him-and oh by the way, he can fly. Mord was created by the Company, a biotechnology firm with the bad habit of engineering monstrosities and unleashing them on the city. Maternal love, and its heartbreaking counterpart, letting go love and mistrust among partners, equals, friends, lovers the possible bonds between human and nonhuman a giant bear, a mysterious organism and, hovering over it all, the power humans have to alter the world, in terrible and beautiful ways. These are the axes around which Jeff VanderMeer structures Borne. Borne already has a hold on Rachel’s heart. Her partner and lover, Wick, is unhappy about Borne’s presence-an outcast biotech scientist, Wick recognizes a threat when he sees one-but he grudgingly allows what he’s powerless to stop. She takes it back to the crumbling apartment building where she lives, deciding on the way home that it’s a he and its name is Borne. Instead, she finds a fist-sized organism that resembles a sea anemone. Those are the thoughtless replenishments he provides. “Mord destroyed and reimagined our broken city for reasons known only to him, yet he also replenished it in his thoughtless way.” So thinks Rachel, the protagonist of Borne, as she climbs the side of Mord, a giant bear, braving his “ropy, dirt-bathed fur, foul with carrion and chemicals” in search of food or biotech treasure that’s stuck to him.

Borne vandermeer review