The Strange Bird: A Borne Story

By Jeff VanderMeer

The Strange Bird--from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer--expands and weaves deeply into the world of his "thorough marvel" of a novel, Borne.

The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory--she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.
 
But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology--satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans--all of them now simply scrambling to survive--who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.
 
With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne--a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780771060076

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year’s-best anthologies. He writes non-fiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.

Reviews for The Strange Bird

[zoes_human · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While each of the Borne books may be read as a stand-alone, this novella is best read after Borne to avoid spoilers. Otherwise, it, like the others, is a complete, independent story. Interestingly enough in light of the protagonist being an amalgamated creature, this story is a blending of the more poetic tone of Dead Astronauts while contain the more concrete story elements of the first of the series. It's a sad and sweet yet hopeful story set in the midst of absolute disaster.

[modioperandi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Strange Bird is a short novel set in the world of Borne. It is a dispatch from that broken world. Strange Bird sits very comfortably on its own and could be read first in the Borne (series) (cycle) the three Borne books can be read in interchangeable order. The Strange Bird at the end of it all is a love story wrapped up in a tale of abused biotech trying to make sense of a world that it knows but does not know. It is about the process of self discovery and becoming something new while already being something else. Themes of change and transformation and love abound hardcore. This tale is so beautifully written. It is lyrical and poetic and just devastatingly beautiful to read a wholly original take on life that is thoroughly nonhuman but also is a person. Just totally stunning and a must read. Its all at once tragic and uplifting.

[markon_305303 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this on audio, and the narrator's voice added to the deliciousness of this book. I have not read Borne, and I enjoyed figuring out how the world the strange bird flew into worked. I identified with the bird and its need to travel, its joy in some experiences (like flying) and the suffering and transformation of other experiences, its puzzlement at its dreams.For those of you who haven't read a synopsis, the strange bird escapes from a lab at the beginning of the book and is compelled to travel, learning and experiencing as it goes. AuntMarge64's use of the word harrowing in her review below is a good one. The mercy & healing given to the strange bird by Wick & Rachel were a welcome relief towards the end of the novella.I've also been thinking of the bird's journey in terms of Ursula LeGuin's comments on home embedded in her address/essay "The Operating Instructions," reprinted in Words are my matter. To paraphrase, that home is not a place but something we create with others.I used the phrase "hope on a thread" in my Litsy comments: the world will survive, whether or not humans do. Overall a five-star read for me, full of longing and beauty in addition to suffering.

[auntmarge64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A companion piece to the author's novel "Borne", this novella describes the fate of a character met in "Borne" (although this does not become clear to the reader for quite a while). Strange Bird is a creature of the bioengineers the main characters battle in the novel, and her fate is, simply put, one of stomach-turning horror. There were a few moments I thought of putting the book down, but Strange Bird is such an interesting character I stayed with her. A few brief scenes from the novel are recognizable in passing, and this helps make some sense of the action. If you liked "Borne" I'd say read this too, but be prepared for some distress. If you haven't read "Borne", though, this story will make little sense, so give the novel a try first. Another supremely creative, though harrowing, plot from a master.