Wick is Rachel’s lover with whom she shares a highly protected home out of sheer necessity. Important to keep in mind in that comparison, of course, is that Jesus was only half human while Borne isn’t even that. So, not to give anything away, but saying that Borne is just a piece of salvage is not unlike saying Jesus was just a carpenter. That first paragraph ends with the narrator foreshadowing this transformation by admitting she could never have imagined what Borne would come to mean to everybody. (In the sense that one should be careful of what they help to create, not in the furry monster part.) Borne quite literally is introduced in the story’s opening paragraph as “just salvage” but by the end of the novel he has transformed into something much more. To suggest that it is difficult to describe Borne in a minimum of words is like saying Mord has a little bit in common with Jeff Bezos. Mord is now lord and master of all he surveys, the ruler of the city by force if not by name. He was created by some ridiculously short-sighted associates of “the Company” as a sort of unbeatable watchdog. To suggest this is a, indeed, a strange vision of a world unlike the one we inhabit would be like saying Jeff Bezos is comfortable.

She and they spent most of their time tracking through the city in search of experiments cast off by “the Company” and Borne is the most prized treasure of this hunt through thick fur of Mord. Rachel is more than willing to admit to ownership of a strange sort of “sixth sense” which all great scavengers have and she is also more than eager to commit to being a member of the scavenger society. While that may sound like a terrible putdown by a critic lacking a sense of the gallant, it is actually the truth she herself describes. Rachel is the first-person narrator of the story. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

Borne by jeff vandermeer