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Mord was created by the Company, a biotechnology firm with the bad habit of engineering monstrosities and unleashing them on the city. Maternal love, and its heartbreaking counterpart, letting go love and mistrust among partners, equals, friends, lovers the possible bonds between human and nonhuman a giant bear, a mysterious organism and, hovering over it all, the power humans have to alter the world, in terrible and beautiful ways. These are the axes around which Jeff VanderMeer structures Borne. Borne already has a hold on Rachel’s heart. Her partner and lover, Wick, is unhappy about Borne’s presence-an outcast biotech scientist, Wick recognizes a threat when he sees one-but he grudgingly allows what he’s powerless to stop. She takes it back to the crumbling apartment building where she lives, deciding on the way home that it’s a he and its name is Borne. Instead, she finds a fist-sized organism that resembles a sea anemone.

Those are the thoughtless replenishments he provides.

“Mord destroyed and reimagined our broken city for reasons known only to him, yet he also replenished it in his thoughtless way.” So thinks Rachel, the protagonist of Borne, as she climbs the side of Mord, a giant bear, braving his “ropy, dirt-bathed fur, foul with carrion and chemicals” in search of food or biotech treasure that’s stuck to him.
