By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews!
I just could not stay away from this book with its crazy and colourful concoction on the cover (alliteration wholly unintentional). It smacks of a sci-fi futuristic setting, so there’s that. But I still couldn’t resist giving it a go. It looks a little like a bird of paradise that has bloomed but then decides to just keep on going… in whatever direction it fancies in the moment.
I did have to read the first 30 pages or so of this book 3 times before it stuck and seriously considered abandoning it (did I mention I don’t like sci-fi?) but after deciding to fully commit to it for 50 pages and really focusing I found that I actually enjoyed Vandermeer’s weird and wonderful dystopian world.
We first meet Rachel as she is scavenging in a ruined city. She discovers Borne clinging to Mord’s fur…a purple blobby thing about the size of a fist which strobes green every thirty seconds or so. And who is Mord you might ask? Well, Mord would be a bear of King Kong proportions who flies around and terrorises anybody still alive in this destroyed city. Mord apparently was taking an afternoon nap, which allows anybody who is so inclined (or at least the ones with nerves of steel) to go rummaging all over him unearthing all manner of treasures. Weird.
Rachel decides to take Borne back home to the Balcony Cliffs she shares with her partner, Wick. Borne, initially inanimate, begins to grow at an astonishing rate and then one day starts talking. At this point a mother/child relationship grows between him and Rachel, with Borne asking her a million questions a day about himself and his environment, trying to figure out who or what he is. Borne morphs from toddler to teenager, pushing boundaries, changing his own shape constantly until he is able to take on the appearance of Rachel and Wick themselves. Even though this all plays out over just a few months, an incredibly strong bond solidifies between Rachel and Borne, one which creates a rift between her and Wick as Wick completely distrusts Borne.
The cause of the city’s demise is a biotech firm which has unleashed its often failed and aborted creations into the city to devastating effect. The Company, as it is known, was ultimately brought down by one of its own creations, the aforementioned Mord, who now rules the roost. Meanwhile, Mord has a posse of smaller vicious bears who do battle for him and an arch enemy the Magician, who in turn has her own group of feral children who have gossamer wings and poisonous claws. One day missiles are fired and it ain’t pretty.
It is a bizarrely lush and lavish yet pernicious post-apocalyptic landscape that Vandermeer creates. For me the book brought to mind A Midsummer Night’s Dream meets Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory played out against a vast, broken landscape: shots of luminescent toxic colour glowing against a shattered and broken world of grey. The noxious river that runs through the city glimmers pink and orange, Borne is purple and strobes emerald green. There are diagnostic beetles that can heal and memory beetles which erase memories, alcohol minnows which are eaten and good for, well escaping reality I would imagine.
This is a book that I would never have read without that stunning cover and it was a lot of fun exploring this deeply strange new world and the atmosphere and characters have stuck with me since I finished reading.
