First lines of Jeff Vandermeer's "Bourne"

 "I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day when the giant bear Mord came roving near our home. To me, Borne was just salvage at first. I didn't know what Borne would mean to us. I couldn't know that we would change everything."

- Borne, by Jeff Vandermeer

I should have loved this book. It's right up my alley: it's set in this harsh, post apocalyptic world where a few plucky survivors eek out a living rummaging through scraps of old technology and evading the dangerous results of genetic experiments gone awry - like Mord, an almost God-like flying bear. Rachel, our protagonist, stumbles upon a mysterious object during a foraging trip, and this is where the book really hits its stride. The object is Bourne, and it's fascinating to see his/her/its transfomration from an object to a pet, then to a strangely human-like cephalopod, and eventually to a childlike weapon. 

And yet. Despite all of these fascinating details, the book left me cold. Rather than marveling at the ineffable mystery of creation like in the Southern Reach books, Bourne tells a tale of people trying to survive in a brutalized world. It was interesting but I felt that the plot's ultimate quest to be a bit trite, his descriptions fascinating but meandering, and the whole thing just too long. 

Don’t get me wrong, VanderMeer is an incredibly talented writer, and I’ll definitely keep exploring his works. But in the end I found Bourne just didn't resonate with me the way his other books have.

 

Despite all these intriguing elements, the book just didn’t do it for me. Unlike VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which left me in awe of the mysteries of creation, "Borne" focuses on survival in a shattered world. While it was certainly interesting, I found the plot a bit predictable, the descriptions sometimes wandered too much, and overall, it just felt too long.

 "Borne" is a good book, no doubt about it, but it just didn’t resonate with me the way his other books have.