"Am I a person?" Borne asked me. "Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a weapon, too." In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now derelict—and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech. One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts—and definitely against Wick’s wishes—Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford. "He was born, but I had borne him." But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.

Udgivet af 4th Estate 

Jeff VanderMeer
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer (born July 7, 1968 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) is an American writer, editor and publisher. He is best known for his contributions to the New Weird and his stories about the city of Ambergris, in books like City of Saints and Madmen. He was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him. His work, both books and short stories, has been translated into over twenty languages. The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases may be his most famous anthology, and is considered a cult classic, still in print along with his Leviathan original fiction series. VanderMeer's reviews and essays have appeared in The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, and many others. He is a regular columnist for the Amazon book-culture blog, and has served as a judge for the Eisner Awards, among others, and has been a guest speaker at such diverse events as the Brisbane Writers Festival, Finncon in Helsinki, and the American Library Association annual conference. His multi-media presentations and lectures on a variety of topics have been given all over the world, and he makes frequent public appearances, including teaching at the Clarion Workshop and Trinity Prep School. Recently, VanderMeer began to experiment in other media, resulting in a movie based on his novel Shriek that featured an original soundtrack by rock band The Church and a Play Station Europe animation of his story “A New Face in Hell” by animator Joel Veitch. Jeff VanderMeer lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann, and three cats.