**A National Post Best Book of the Year**
In a ruined, nameless city of the future, Rachel, who makes her living as a scavenger, finds a creature she names Borne entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic, despotic bear. Mord once prowled the corridors of the biotech organization known as the Company, which lies at the outskirts of the city, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly and broke free. Driven insane by his torture at the Company, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers like Rachel.
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still be making creatures and sending them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.
Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. When she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, she convinces her lover, Wick, a former employee of the Company, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells.
Wick is a special kind of supplier; the drug dealers in the city sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear to release powerful memories of other people’s happier times, or to pull forgotten memories from the user’s own mind, or to just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.
Searching Wick’s apartment one day, Rachel finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled Mord that cryptically references the Magician, a rival drug dealer, and the Company building. What is Wick hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?
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From the bestselling author of Annihilation—now a major motion picture—and the Southern Reach trilogy, an epic new novel about a young woman struggling to survive in a ruined, dangerous city of the near future
“Am I a person or a weapon?” Borne asks Rachel, in extremis. “You are a person,” Rachel tells him. “But like a person, you can be a weapon, too.”
The city is littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now seemingly derelict—and punished by the unpredictable attacks of a giant bear. From one of her scavenging missions, Rachel brings home Borne, who is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but who exudes a strange charisma. Rachel feels a growing attachment to Borne, a protectiveness that she can ill afford. It’s exactly the kind of vulnerability that will upend her precarious existence, unnerving her partner, Wick, and upsetting the delicate balance of their unforgiving city—possibly forever. And yet, little as she understands what or who Borne may be, she cannot give him up, even as Borne grows and changes . . . “He was born, but I had borne him.”
JEFF VANDERMEER is an award-winning novelist and editor, most recently the author of the critically acclaimed Borne and the New York Times–bestselling Southern Reach trilogy. VanderMeer is also the co-editor, with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, of The Big Book of Science Fiction. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Web: JeffVanderMeer.com
Twitter: @JeffVanderMeer
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Book Description Condition: Fair. Buy with confidence! Book is in acceptable condition with wear to the pages, binding, and some marks within 0.49. Seller Inventory # bk1443449148xvz189zvxacp
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.6. Seller Inventory # G1443449148I3N00
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.6. Seller Inventory # G1443449148I3N00
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.6. Seller Inventory # G1443449148I3N00
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