Bourne, by Jeff VanderMeer
5.0 Stars
3-22-2018

Puts the "new" and the "weird" into "New Weird". Bourne is an imaginative delight. At various times this story reminded me of Perdido Street Station, Nabokov, Pit People, The Road, The Thing, Oryx and Crake, On My Way to Paradise, Princess Maker, and of course Annihilation/Control. It is a feast of ideas, relations, word play, and creation. The basic story is of a waste-land scavenger who comes across an advanced piece of biotech, and proceeds to raise the biotech up from an Aliens-type egg sac to its full, protean, end stage glory. This rearing and relationship and its ambiguity is the heart of the story, and really its strongest part.

The last 20% or so of the books talks more about people, which are boring, and less about the relationship between Mom and Beast. I would have been fine with just the first 80%, but whatever, it is not bad, the last 20% is more like _Acceptance_, a gentle let down after a crazy story.

I hope Scalzi is happy with his vast piles of cash. If Scalzi cared at all about writing great stories, Bourne would make him cry himself to sleep each night.