Strange Bird: A Borne Story
Product ID: 585160156
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The Strange Bird —from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer—expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvel”* of a novel, Borne . The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape. But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans—all of them now simply scrambling to survive—who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home. With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne . He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world. Praise for Borne * “Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.” —Colson Whitehead “VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth.” —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review Review: Love these books and author - I love an author with the skill to just start telling the story as assuming the reader has an IQ. Great book and follow up to Bourne. Review: This book is awesome - It's an extension of the world built with his other novel "Borne" which tells us the events we'd already seen from another point of view, the one of the strange bird, used and misused by the ones that cross it's path. Jeff Vandermeer will never cease to amaze me.
| Best Sellers Rank | #51,565 in Science Fiction (Books) #59,635 in Fantasy (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,175 Reviews |
R**Y
Love these books and author
I love an author with the skill to just start telling the story as assuming the reader has an IQ. Great book and follow up to Bourne.
L**O
This book is awesome
It's an extension of the world built with his other novel "Borne" which tells us the events we'd already seen from another point of view, the one of the strange bird, used and misused by the ones that cross it's path. Jeff Vandermeer will never cease to amaze me.
C**N
Thought provoking
I loved every second of it, seeing the story of the strange bird expanded was awesome. almost as good as borne
W**N
Exquisite heart, exquisite prose. A small masterpiece. More than 5 stars!
More than 5-Stars! Exquisite heart, exquisite prose. A small masterpiece. A small miracle of light and joy and pain and, in the end, of love and life. VanderMeer once again transports us to his dystopian world of "Borne". Notes and quotes: And even then she did not know that the sky was blue or what the sun was, because she had flown out into the cool night air and all her wonder resided in the points of light that blazed through the darkness above. But then the joy of flying overtook her and she went higher and higher and higher, and she did not care who saw or what awaited her in the bliss of the free fall and the glide and the limitless expanse. Oh, for if this was life, then she had not yet been alive! - The Strange Bird had perched for safety on a hook near the ceiling and watched, knowing she might be next. The badger that stared up, wishing for wings. The goat. The monkey. She stared back at them and did not look away, because to look away was to be a coward and she was not cowardly. Because she must offer them some comfort, no matter how useless. Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being. Not even in the parts of her that were human. - In the lab, so many of the scientists had said “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it. - At true north lay the great bear Mord, [the Magician's] mortal enemy for control of the city. At true south lay the Company building, a place that the Strange Bird knew as a kind of laboratory on a scale far outstripping the one from which she had escaped. To the west, the Magician’s regard for her transformed children, her observatory headquarters, while to the east, forever changing in the intensity with which the Magician regarded them, were a scavenger named Rachel and a competitor of the Magician’s named Wick. Rachel worked with or for Wick and Wick made creatures much as the Magician did, and used them to barter for goods.
J**S
Brutal but Beautiful Parallels to/with The Painted Bird
Listened to this three-hour digital original Amazon single with audible narration over the past couple of days. I don't know what they are calling the stuff that Jeff VanderMeer is writing, but I have decided to label it "Cryptofiction." Apparently this is a riff on a novel entitled Borne. This 86 page novella takes certain elements and characters from the periphery of that larger work and spins them out into their own wildly evocative, surreal and for me at least profoundly compelling narrative. I'll definitely listen to it again in the next few days. It takes place in a nightmarish post-apocalyptic world. Dreamlike. A bit like Tim Burton channeled through Michael Crichton. That is, audacious and strange but not too flowery or fantastic. It's hard to explain, but you'll see what I mean. Reminded me a little teeny bit of an old story called Rachel in Love. But that was really just one tiny string in a ball of yarn with countless strands. I also believe VanderMeer was intentionally angling for a parallel with The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. The stories share impossibly bleak and relentlessly cruel landscapes. In the case of The Painted Bird, a strangely primeval and hateful post-World War II Poland. In this case, a strangely primeval and hateful post-apocalyptic United States. Both are full of monstrously original images. But definitely not to all tastes. If you hated all that southern reach stuff, you had better stay away from this. Still though, I loved it. The ending was really something. Uplifting, actually.
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