declaired 's review for:

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
4.0
A quick summary: "Borne" is a "survivors during an ongoing apocalypse" story, centered around three characters: Rachel, the scavenger, our central POV character and the one through whom we see the decay of the old world and the claustrophobia of the Company-led apocalypse; Wick, an ex-Company biotech engineer and lover of Rachel; and Borne, a creature/child/person/plant-thing that Rachel scavenges and brings home. It's a story of a city's (and a way of life) ending, told through a family drama. In the backdrop are weird and imaginative descriptions, in an aggressively strange but terribly familiar world. With flying giant bears.

Things I quite liked: Borne is the central mystery of "Borne," which is appropriate, but Borne is also So Incredibly Delightful. A lot of the humor in this book comes from Rachel and Borne's interactions, as she tries to mother/raise/teach/person-ify Borne, and the ways that does and doesn't work (Borne may be a person but Borne is not human).

One of the central questions of the book is "what makes a person a person?" and "when can a person stop being a person"

Jeff Vandermeer Loves and Supports Nature (which may or may not eat your face)

The end of the book is so obviously In Conversation with other post-apocalpytic stories; the story stands fine on its own but I love the ending specifically because it goes for some very different beats.
SpoilerI think in other books The Magician, who is the villain here, could be the hero; she's shaped by the trauma of the world and is using those tools to fight against it. But in this story, Rachel, who scavenges, who hides, finds the trap that comes from being stuck inside and accepting/manipulating a specific system. She takes a different road, and works to rebuild the world in small ways.