Books › Borne
Borne
430 pages
A tender, hallucinatory fever dream about finding love and humanity in the toxic ruins of a bioengineered apocalypse.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like wandering through a toxic, bioluminescent wasteland and unexpectedly finding a beating heart. It is a deeply weird, hallucinatory experience that balances grotesque body horror with startling, aching tenderness. The narrative moves at a steady, atmospheric pace, immersing you in a ruined city terrorized by a giant flying bear, yet the core of the story is intimately domestic, focusing on the messy, maternal love between a scavenger and an evolving, unknowable biotech creature. The prose is lush and sensory, making the apocalyptic decay feel vibrant and alive. It is a perfect read for those who crave ecological dystopias that are less about saving the world and more about finding connection, beauty, and survival within its bizarre, mutated remains.
- Mood
- hallucinatory
- claustrophobic
- bizarre
- toxic
- strangely beautiful
- Tone
- tender
- surreal
- melancholic
- pragmatic
- awe-struck
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- found family · ecological collapse · maternal love · nature of humanity · surviving the ruins · the grotesque
- The writing
- Lyrical, hallucinatory, and deeply sensory, grounding grotesque biotech in startlingly beautiful imagery.
- The arc
- Moves from isolated, wary survival to a profound, heartbreaking attachment that transcends human boundaries.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love weird fiction, ecological dystopias, and stories that find tenderness in the grotesque.
Content notes
- body horror
- animal death
- violence
- ecological devastation
- gore
About the book
In a ruined city, Rachel, a scavenger, finds a small creature named "Borne" tangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic bear made by a biotech firm. She knows her lover, Wick, is keeping secrets about working there, so she searches his stuff and finds a journal titled "Mord." What is he hiding?
Description from Open Library.
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