Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

10 reviews

bookmaxxing's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

woah. this book rules

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Torture, Death, Violence, and Body horror

Minor: Sexual content and Cannibalism

TW: many many bugs and insect horrors

grabman's review

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content

bedtimesnack's review

adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Murder, Confinement, and Violence

Minor: Blood, Child death, Cannibalism, Sexual content, Kidnapping, and Injury/Injury detail

edensbookshelf's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Violence

Moderate: Sexual content and Death

readingrainbowroad's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use and Violence

Minor: Sexual content and Addiction

troisha's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Violence, and Death

Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Chronic illness, Child death, Drug use, Excrement, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Torture

Minor: Animal death, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, and Xenophobia

fireswatch's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It is as perplexing as it is enthralling, from beginning to end. Jeff VanderMeer does an incredible job of painting an overwhelmingly bleak setting that leaves you wondering if there will ever be even the possibility of a glimmer of hope on the horizon. It is difficult to predict where the story will go from one chapter to the next, but you can be sure that it will be both mind-boggling and exhilarating. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the ending was absolutely outstanding!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Body horror

Moderate: Child death, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Chronic illness

Minor: Sexual content

bitchyphysicist's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore

Minor: Sexual content

grvhppr's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

First off, I loved this piece. It’s my first VanderMeer work, and it couldn’t have been a better choice. 

Overall, the pace of the book felt pleasantly slow—especially during the early years with Borne. It gave the sense that we lived the childhood years of Borne alongside Rachel. That by the time

Borne must leave home the story could skip some time and the reader could feel the weariness of living the life of a scavenger on the run. The cute Borne days were long gone by this point.

 

This book questions what it means to be a person. We the reader must determine if this means to be human, to be ethical, to be flawed, to be alive, etc. The question is vast and wraps the story like a blanket.

Can Borne still be a person if he’s a murderer? Can Rachel?

On the surface the tech was fun.

Memory beetles, alcohol minnows, fire-breathing venomous bears, cloaking garb, and more. Having their survival based around scavenging biotechnology added a wonderful sci-fi element to the story.

 

Thinking back, this story feels sadder than how I felt during the listen. The bond between the trio is unique and how it unfolds while could predicted with some thought doesn’t take away from the sense of loss. Not necessarily in lives but in just… life. Borne, the book, is full of destruction—ceaseless. The characters are all made of strong stuff to be able to function in a world such as ‘The City’. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Violence, Animal death, Body horror, and Death

Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, and Sexual content

Minor: Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, Drug abuse, Chronic illness, and Drug use

carmexfiend's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was recommended to me as a "woman raises [alien] kid" story so I was a little skeptical if I would like it but I loved it a lot. While raising a non-human person is an important part of the story, I think the main threads throughout the book is grief, regret, memory and how people live and thrive despite hardships and trauma. There's an established (het) main relationship that is also a major part of the story since you're watching these two characters conflict and support each other throughout. The main character is telling the story to the reader, but she sometimes keeps information back and reveals it later. This gave it a more natural feel despite the very weird world and I think this lends itself to future re-reads.

The story itself is about a woman named Rachel who survives in a post-apocalyptic world filled with cybernetic tech animals ("biotech" - it reminded me of the tech in the movie eXistenZ (1999) though less body-horrory). She lives with her business/love partner, Wick, and scavenges tech for him. One day she finds a piece of tech he doesn't recognize and she eventually ends up raising it as "Borne". Borne isn't human, doesn't have human limitations, and doesn't think quite like a human and this leads to a lot of the conflict between the three characters. Without getting into spoilers, I'd say the book deals a lot with grief but is hopeful overall. It really captures that feeling of "I wish I could have done that differently" that you remember someone who has passed away. Rachel has a lot of trauma in her past and the present day isn't much kinder to her but the book never felt like a trauma-fest. In the end, I really loved the writing, the world, and the characters.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Torture, Death, Grief, and Child death

Minor: Animal death, Death of parent, Sexual content, and Drug use

There is a torture scene fairly early in the book. It's not graphically described but it does go on for a few paragraphs. The world is also built on medical and animal experimentation. We don't see anything graphic, but animals and humans (including children) being modified/created in a lab is the basis of the biotech.