If The Blob Were Nice: Review of Borne

Borne (2017)
Written by: Jeff VanderMeer
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 336 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Macmillan

Why I Chose It: I was in the middle of reading Annihilation when one of my co-workers came up with this book and bought it. Curious, I read the summary and decided to add it to my list. What was Borne? How would he change things? I wanted to know about this world the people lived in and what the heck was going on, so I added it to my library list.

The Premise:

“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.

Spoiler Free Review Below!

Discussion: Jeff VanderMeer certainly has a kickass imagination. If you liked Annihilation and the weirdness that exists there, then you’ll have an even better time examining the world in which Rachel fights to survive. She and her companion Wick are constantly on the lookout for both dangers  in the form of other people and useful biotech—which might be anything from shiny beetles you can use to experience other, happier memories, to alcohol minnows that can get you drunk (just add water!). And then of course, there’s Mord, a huge bear that can step on you with a single paw and kill you. Yes, he’s that big. And he can fly. It’s a very strange thing to have in existence, but there it is. And while you never truly figure out what made the world fall apart (you get hints of things here and there, that it was probably a combination of a lot of things), you do know that in this city it was the Company and Mord that destroyed everything and transformed it into this bizarre wasteland that we have now.

Rachel’s relationship with Borne takes up the vast bulk of the book. Borne essentially goes from a small purple blob-like thing to a walking, talking creature. Initially from the summary I thought it meant he would shift into a human or something, but he’s 100% Borne throughout the entire book. A strange, morphing, shimmering, organism that begins with a mind as innocent as a child until he fully understands what sort of world he and Rachel are in, and what he might be able to do about it.

I feel like readers are really deep in Rachel’s POV; you always get a sense of how excited or wary or terrified she is of something. You always know her thoughts, concerns, hopes, and so forth. I wanted Rachel to come out at the end with something better to look forward to rather than just be stuck scraping to survive day in and day out. I was terrified at one point that she might be left alone and the book might end with her by herself, which would be extremely sad. Life is hard enough already—being stuck in that city without anyone at all? That’s when you lose your mind or just decide to be done and end things because death is far easier than what Rachel and Wick have to deal with much of the time.

However, I will say that you will leave this book satisfied. You discover a lot of interesting things, such as Rachel’s past, Borne’s origin, Wick’s secrets, and more. You’re at least left with the knowledge that things might get better over time; that maybe life will be okay.

My only real qualm with this book? The Company. Not what they do or who they are—but just the name. Really? “Company?” I feel like I’ve encountered books that just call their big bad company…er, Company before (but of course at the moment I can’t remember, surprise). Even so, just calling it something so generic is boring to me. Like Jeff used up all his imagination on every single other detail of this world, but when faced with naming the one corporation that destroyed an entire city (and God knows what else—I was intensely curious the entire time as to what Rachel might find should she actually venture out of the city into the rest of the world), all he could grace us with was “Company.” Boring.

But I’m willing to let that go because his descriptions are always so on point that I can easily visualize everything that’s going on around them. And let me tell you–it’s a fucked up place. I often wondered how people were still able to eat anything. And what the hell were they drinking? Biotech can be simple and pretty, or it can be ugly and extremely dangerous. It’s like a lot of awful science experiments got way, way out of control and the Company burst and spilled them everywhere. The river is full of all manner of contamination to the point that it’s a rainbow of very pretty chemicals and unknowables. In fact, I feel like the Company and Nnedi Okorafor’s Tower creators in The Book of Phoenix could have been related, as they create a lot of awful, amazing things, too.

In conclusion: Company name aside, I had a good time reading this book. I liked all of Rachel’s introspection. The revelations provided to readers are very interesting, and overall it’s just good writing with a lot of post-apocalyptic sciencey goodness. While it can feel slow at times, it’s worth it to keep seeing the layers of this world and the people in it slough away one by one until the very end. To be sure, now that I’ve finished with the Southern Reach Trilogy, I can appreciate the start, middle, and end to this book all the more (especially because it has one!).