Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

7 reviews

kuronekostea's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

An incredible narrative about a young woman and her struggles to survive such a unique, scary apocalyptic city. I absolutely loved the characters in this book. 
Easily my favorite book of this year.

I enjoyed the progressive play through of Rachel, Wick and Borne as they all grew and developed as characters who inevitably came to their own conclusions about the world around them and their places in it. I also found the underlying mystery fascinating as well. Like many of VanderMeer's books there are many questions still left unanswered. I plan to read the others in this series and hope we hear more about the possible AMC TV Series based on this novel.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Death, Sexual content, Violence, Trafficking, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Body horror, Confinement, Gore, Infertility, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, and Abandonment

diana_blackmoon's review

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

In this crazy story about big bear, I was amazed to find such a compelling story. About motherhood, love, hope, betrayal and what it means to be a person. It is gruesome and terrifying but also beautiful and hopefull. The narration style takes a minute to get used to but was the best possible choice for this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Terminal illness, Torture, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Grief, and Alcohol

scytheria's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Gore

Moderate: Chronic illness and Death of parent

cryosphinx's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional slow-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

4.75

I went into this knowing very little, having a friend recommend it to me. I was sold on post apocalyptic but that's quite it for my knowledge.

VanderMeer's writing style took a little bit for me to get used to, coming off a long string of romantic fantasy books so the beginning was hard for me to get into, but once I got a feel for the writing and the vivid and lush environment and characters, I was invested. His writing does so much in such an a beautiful and unique way they I felt sucked into this world, even with the mysteries such as why is there a giant bear flying around?

There's a lot of turns in this and it's been a long while since I've had a book where I read a sentence and had to put the book down to stare and mentally recover from what I just discovered. I did find the book was on the slow side, with a bulk of the book being centered around Rachel and Borne in the Balcony Cliffs (but I supposed the book IS titled Borne after all). It's very character driven with the great plot just being about survival in this strange but plausible apocalypse.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Torture, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual violence

maryellen's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

troisha's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Drug use, Gore, Torture, Blood, Excrement, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Vomit, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

carmexfiend's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was recommended to me as a "woman raises [alien] kid" story so I was a little skeptical if I would like it but I loved it a lot. While raising a non-human person is an important part of the story, I think the main threads throughout the book is grief, regret, memory and how people live and thrive despite hardships and trauma. There's an established (het) main relationship that is also a major part of the story since you're watching these two characters conflict and support each other throughout. The main character is telling the story to the reader, but she sometimes keeps information back and reveals it later. This gave it a more natural feel despite the very weird world and I think this lends itself to future re-reads.

The story itself is about a woman named Rachel who survives in a post-apocalyptic world filled with cybernetic tech animals ("biotech" - it reminded me of the tech in the movie eXistenZ (1999) though less body-horrory). She lives with her business/love partner, Wick, and scavenges tech for him. One day she finds a piece of tech he doesn't recognize and she eventually ends up raising it as "Borne". Borne isn't human, doesn't have human limitations, and doesn't think quite like a human and this leads to a lot of the conflict between the three characters. Without getting into spoilers, I'd say the book deals a lot with grief but is hopeful overall. It really captures that feeling of "I wish I could have done that differently" that you remember someone who has passed away. Rachel has a lot of trauma in her past and the present day isn't much kinder to her but the book never felt like a trauma-fest. In the end, I really loved the writing, the world, and the characters.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Child death, Death, Torture, and Grief

Minor: Animal death, Drug use, Sexual content, and Death of parent

There is a torture scene fairly early in the book. It's not graphically described but it does go on for a few paragraphs. The world is also built on medical and animal experimentation. We don't see anything graphic, but animals and humans (including children) being modified/created in a lab is the basis of the biotech.