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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Gorgeous world building.
Arresting and full of life. Beautiful visuals and lessons learned. Find some time to read uninterrupted if you can. Trust me.
Arresting and full of life. Beautiful visuals and lessons learned. Find some time to read uninterrupted if you can. Trust me.
VanderMeer is officially my favorite SciFi writer. Not only is this book complex and weird (brilliantly and wonderfully weird), it has some more heart and depth. He touches on the theme of paternity in a thoughtful and original way. If you like the "Southern Reach" Trilogy, you will love this book.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Partially filled the Southern Reach-shaped hole in my heart. This is VanderMeer in his element, very Area X-esque - a scavenger working and co-surviving with her lover in a desolate, abandoned city full of trash and things reminiscent of a society, now only to be scavenged. VanderMeer masterfully builds his world such that we know what it now looked like, dark and grimy, and also what it used to be, and I could see that it was once shiny and futuristic (I do love them alcohol minnows).
The star of the story is Borne. We see him through the eyes of Rachel, who found him when he was 'little' when she was out scavenging, and who tried to raise him as a child. Borne is a purple blob creature who initially presented as a plant, but we find out that he babbles like a toddler, loves sunlight and eating trash, and changes shape like nothing that can be imagined. As he grows, Borne's character is the one to move the story and its protagonists towards the source of conflict, what VanderMeer, in true Area X style, calls The Company.
VanderMeer's writing conveys a lot in the background. You have his words in front of you, and they don't quite explicitly give away everything, but you sense a lurking, large horror that may or may not come out. It's rather Lovecraftian, if I may. The Company is the tower in Area X, creepy and foreboding. There are strange technology and strange animals and even strange humans (or not-humans) everywhere. Borne itself represents the speculative nature of the story. He is the physical manifestation of all the ideas presented in the story - exploring the nature of a person, desolation of a city, learning self-identity, and so on.
I loved the book because it's written so beautifully and engagingly. I hang on to every word while reading his books because he is very succinct, and every word he uses in his sentences carries meaning to the story and is worth digesting slowly. Do I dare say then I would have liked it better if VanderMeer betrayed what he usually does and actually gives us an opportunity to know more about the world he's build, the Company, his characters, and even Borne? His characters are distinct individuals but it feels like they are out of reach to the reader, murky illusions in a story. Nothing much was expanded on Borne and his biology, and how he came about.
VanderMeer doesn't give you the satisfaction of knowing. He lets you speculate. Which is probably just as well. 4.5 stars.
The star of the story is Borne. We see him through the eyes of Rachel, who found him when he was 'little' when she was out scavenging, and who tried to raise him as a child. Borne is a purple blob creature who initially presented as a plant, but we find out that he babbles like a toddler, loves sunlight and eating trash, and changes shape like nothing that can be imagined. As he grows, Borne's character is the one to move the story and its protagonists towards the source of conflict, what VanderMeer, in true Area X style, calls The Company.
"Sometimes Borne would adopt a kind of a new "bloat" position that made him look like a huge, fleshy eggplant on its side, his tentacles pulled down over his torso to provide stability."
VanderMeer's writing conveys a lot in the background. You have his words in front of you, and they don't quite explicitly give away everything, but you sense a lurking, large horror that may or may not come out. It's rather Lovecraftian, if I may. The Company is the tower in Area X, creepy and foreboding. There are strange technology and strange animals and even strange humans (or not-humans) everywhere. Borne itself represents the speculative nature of the story. He is the physical manifestation of all the ideas presented in the story - exploring the nature of a person, desolation of a city, learning self-identity, and so on.
I loved the book because it's written so beautifully and engagingly. I hang on to every word while reading his books because he is very succinct, and every word he uses in his sentences carries meaning to the story and is worth digesting slowly. Do I dare say then I would have liked it better if VanderMeer betrayed what he usually does and actually gives us an opportunity to know more about the world he's build, the Company, his characters, and even Borne? His characters are distinct individuals but it feels like they are out of reach to the reader, murky illusions in a story. Nothing much was expanded on Borne and his biology, and how he came about.
VanderMeer doesn't give you the satisfaction of knowing. He lets you speculate. Which is probably just as well. 4.5 stars.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
New weird fiction, semi plotless. Usually both things I enjoy but this one didn't really dig deep enough into any particular facet, such that the pacing began to feel slow and repetitive. The characters were mostly trudging through their actions and emotions in a sort of detached zombielike way which made it kind of difficult for me to care about any theme, plot, or mystery the book had.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book rules, what else can I say? I was getting some heavy adventure time vibes from the biotech and the varying characters, like if you sucked all the whimsy and joy from adventure time but kept the crazy colorful creatures. That alone made it much more of a fun read than the southern reach books, but it does lack the staying power of the southern reach, in a way.
This is mostly because you don't really need to worry about the backstory of the city, it's not important for this book. Vandermeer does a great job of building up the city, the biotech, Mord, and the scavengers in your mind, and once you understand how all these elements intertwine, the circumstances for how or why the world reached this point are largely inconsequential and don't matter to the story being told. Besides, if the city itself is a character, the interactions it has with others are what makes it truly shine. So here's my thoughts on all our major players:
I love Borne to death, he's a fantastic and charismatic little guy who really does bring a lot of light to this nightmare world. I wish he had more screen time, all things considered, now that I'm at the end it kinda feels like there wasn't enough Borne in this book called Borne.
Rachel is great too, serving as a solid protagonist. Id say she's more likeable than the biologist or Control in the southern reach books, though she suffers by having a pretty flat personality. Ultimately it's not a big problem since I don't think she needed much more than what she got, and her motherly relationship with Borne works very well especially early on when he's "younger".
Lastly is Wick, who I loved right away but got some bad vibes from initially. He seemed prime for a betrayal and villain-reveal, whichthankfully does not happen and instead he becomes a truly worthy partner for Rachel, despite all their hardships. I did predict that he had something to do with her memory loss (he sells memory altering beetles for god sakes), but I did not expect him to be a damn robot or whatever.
Facing against them are the remnants of the Company, a nameless biotech research facility which has taken control of the city via their gigantic insane floating golden bear named Mord. I also love Mord and feel really bad for what happened to him, they really did that bear dirty. However, I love the idea of the reigning force in this broken city being a giant floating god bear that mostly just wants to eat and sleep until the pollution reaches him as well and he becomes a mindless beast. I didn't really care much for the Mord proxies, however. I wish they were a bit more interesting than just being combat-ready muscle bears, especially when compared to The Magician and her army of fucked up mutant bug children.
The Magician is the closest you get to a true villainous character, as while Mord is a bioengineered creature gone wrong that is just surviving like everyone else (but can fly and glows gold), The Magician is every bad thing you can put in a villain: experiments on kids, runs a drug empire, kind of runs her own cult, holds information and memories hostage, tries to become a landlord... She sucks, and as a character she was barely developed or fleshed out enough for me to care about her much beyond the mythology of her given by Wick. The few encounters you get from her she doesn't really appear threatening, or nearly as impressive as the myths around her portray. Even It is, however, awesome that shetries and horribly fails to explode Mord with a heat seeking missile, which leads to him getting so pissed off that he just rips the company building to shreds. Who knows if that was her plan all along, it doesn't matter, it just makes Mord look that much cooler and the Magician look like a loser. Fitting that she got killed by getting beaten to death via a rock lmao.
My thoughts on the book overall are very jumbled, because a LOT goes on, but I think it's a great sci-fi book that does a lot right, but could have used some extra development on some of the more major characters (more borne, more magician, maybe less mord?). Check it out if you like post-apocalypse climate disaster set pieces, and if you're okay with mindfucky visuals.
This is mostly because you don't really need to worry about the backstory of the city, it's not important for this book. Vandermeer does a great job of building up the city, the biotech, Mord, and the scavengers in your mind, and once you understand how all these elements intertwine, the circumstances for how or why the world reached this point are largely inconsequential and don't matter to the story being told. Besides, if the city itself is a character, the interactions it has with others are what makes it truly shine. So here's my thoughts on all our major players:
I love Borne to death, he's a fantastic and charismatic little guy who really does bring a lot of light to this nightmare world. I wish he had more screen time, all things considered, now that I'm at the end it kinda feels like there wasn't enough Borne in this book called Borne.
Rachel is great too, serving as a solid protagonist. Id say she's more likeable than the biologist or Control in the southern reach books, though she suffers by having a pretty flat personality. Ultimately it's not a big problem since I don't think she needed much more than what she got, and her motherly relationship with Borne works very well especially early on when he's "younger".
Lastly is Wick, who I loved right away but got some bad vibes from initially. He seemed prime for a betrayal and villain-reveal, which
Facing against them are the remnants of the Company, a nameless biotech research facility which has taken control of the city via their gigantic insane floating golden bear named Mord. I also love Mord and feel really bad for what happened to him, they really did that bear dirty. However, I love the idea of the reigning force in this broken city being a giant floating god bear that mostly just wants to eat and sleep until the pollution reaches him as well and he becomes a mindless beast. I didn't really care much for the Mord proxies, however. I wish they were a bit more interesting than just being combat-ready muscle bears, especially when compared to The Magician and her army of fucked up mutant bug children.
The Magician is the closest you get to a true villainous character, as while Mord is a bioengineered creature gone wrong that is just surviving like everyone else (but can fly and glows gold), The Magician is every bad thing you can put in a villain: experiments on kids, runs a drug empire, kind of runs her own cult, holds information and memories hostage, tries to become a landlord... She sucks, and as a character she was barely developed or fleshed out enough for me to care about her much beyond the mythology of her given by Wick. The few encounters you get from her she doesn't really appear threatening, or nearly as impressive as the myths around her portray. Even It is, however, awesome that she
My thoughts on the book overall are very jumbled, because a LOT goes on, but I think it's a great sci-fi book that does a lot right, but could have used some extra development on some of the more major characters (more borne, more magician, maybe less mord?). Check it out if you like post-apocalypse climate disaster set pieces, and if you're okay with mindfucky visuals.
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
My second favorite Vandermeer book, after Annihilation.
What a strange, strange book. I'm bound to misspell some names in this, so I apologize in advance.
The setting of this book is a dystopian world with two entities fighting for power. Both appear to have ties to a corporation that was doing lots of naughty things that caused the current world situation to happen. Rachel, our protagonist, is out salvaging when she finds a small anemone looking pod as it drops off of Mord one day. It takes a long time to find out who Mord is so I'll leave that one alone. She takes the pod home and names it Borne only to find that it isn't quite so anemone-like as it looks. "He" grows and learns to speak and grows some more.
At this point I had to set the book down for a bit because this whole section was extremely weird and my brain temporarily couldn't take more.
The story is essentially about Rachel and her relationships with Borne and a man named Wick. Wick does not like Borne and believes that he's dangerous. We get some about Mord and a character named The Magician also, but they are on screen much less frequently.
Borne is awesome. I loved the character and I loved how bizarre he was, even though I struggled at the beginning with grasping the idea of this character.
"I was trapped within Borne, hoping that on the outside he looked like a rock."
The setting of this book is a dystopian world with two entities fighting for power. Both appear to have ties to a corporation that was doing lots of naughty things that caused the current world situation to happen. Rachel, our protagonist, is out salvaging when she finds a small anemone looking pod as it drops off of Mord one day. It takes a long time to find out who Mord is so I'll leave that one alone. She takes the pod home and names it Borne only to find that it isn't quite so anemone-like as it looks. "He" grows and learns to speak and grows some more.
At this point I had to set the book down for a bit because this whole section was extremely weird and my brain temporarily couldn't take more.
The story is essentially about Rachel and her relationships with Borne and a man named Wick. Wick does not like Borne and believes that he's dangerous. We get some about Mord and a character named The Magician also, but they are on screen much less frequently.
Borne is awesome. I loved the character and I loved how bizarre he was, even though I struggled at the beginning with grasping the idea of this character.
"I was trapped within Borne, hoping that on the outside he looked like a rock."