A review by mes0pelagic_fan
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-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

4.25

I don't know if I enjoyed reading this book, but I think it's amazing and I want to make everyone in my life read it so I have people to share it with. It's so well done, and by turns sweet and hopeful and gruesome and disturbing. The real meat of the story is a mother's journey to reconcile the truth of the world with the haunting lie of memory, both in the context of her relationship with her
freakish squid shapeshifting and unwillingly murderous
child as he grows up and becomes his own person and also her
violent toxicly apocalyptic
home that she shares with her
mind-altering-biotech/drug-dealing
boyfriend who keeps things from her. The idea that life can really only mean something because it ends underpins the emotional crux of this story and contextualizes both the pain and joy of life, taken to wild extremes in this devastatingly brutal story. 

I had a hunch things would end up
being crushing but also hopeful and I was rewarded with such a plausible vision of Rachel and the city's future! Her in the renovated balcony cliffs with Wick and the children who could be what she wanted, more than Borne could be, but not any less loved literally made me crazy. She literally is breaking generational cycles!!!!! keeping the horror of her life from those kids and letting them think she hadn't suffered enough to become hardened when she suffered enough to become kind by realizing that life doesn't mean anything when you're just surviving, and that to be a person you have to do more than that. And Bourne's happy ending-- so much reduced but exactly what he wanted, to be back home in the Balcony Cliffs with Rachel and Wick, made me want to cry.


Annihilation may be the scariest movie I can remember seeing in my life, but this book takes that unforgettable freak bear and made me feel grateful to be alive. 

Also, this author is obsessed with bears. 
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