The Strange Bird

A Borne Story

By: Jeff VanderMeer

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

The Strange Bird - from New York Times best-selling novelist Jeff VanderMeer - expands and weaves deeply into the world of his critically acclaimed 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 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 creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

©2017 Jeff VanderMeer (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Haunting

This book made me cry. It was so beautifully written and performed. It is unforgettable.

beautiful

Poetic and melancholy, this story drips with vibrance and life, capturing the essence of its world and the strange birds charter from beginning to end. The narrators voice spins personality, longing and anguish into one stunning and breataking tale.

Great story and narration but...

This is exactly what was needed to round out Borne and while the narrator was excellent, her voice and tone made me want to take a nap. I don't mean that I was bored but it felt like I was getting read a bedtime story as a child.

Great short story

Even though parts of it feel jumbled, this story is a great addition to this world and gives crucial context and information on the things that were happening before and during Borne.

Haunting and Beautiful

Loved this continuation of the Borne story and VanderMeer is a master eco-story teller. The imagery and depth of emotion he brings to animal biotech characters and the broken humans who create, hurt, and help them is poetic. Even in all the chaos there is love and beauty. Strange Bird is my favorite VanderMeer book, so far, and that is saying a lot.

Beautiful but depressing

I love the work of Jeff Vandermeer, I love Borne, Area X trilogy, and I enjoyed the The Dead Astronauts. This story was brief but I kept wondering when it would be over. It is fatally depressing, with body horror elements, dread, and the feeling of being trapped. Without spoiling anything, this story is the story of a bird with complex thoughts and desires, and she gets swept up in a storm and terrible things happen to her after that, that she describes to us along with her intense existential and physical pain. She's a character that things happen to for the most part, where transformation is hell and also freedom, though it's always transformation imposed on her by others, and she is a peripheral observer of a larger story. She is a strong consistent character who endures a lot, so I don't fault her for my feelings on this book if that makes any sense! I don't know how to feel after listening to this, though I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a while. If you are triggered by body horror stuff, or very sensitive to depression experienced by characters in a book, I hate to say it but avoid this book because that is the majority of it. If you love Vandermeer and aren't in the two categories of people I listed it's worth a listen as a part of the Borne series with Vandermeer's writing being beautiful as always.

An Oddly Haunting Novel

A parallel story to Borne. It will stick with you if you get it. 😉

Great

This was a great listen. It’s a short companion piece to Borne. I enjoyed seeing the Borne characters from another perspective.

Beautiful heart felt story

I cried at the end! It was such a beautiful story. I read Borne yesterday and just finished The Strange Bird all in same span. This was an amazing companion piece, more insight to the novel Borne, unanswered questions answered! Onto Dead Astronauts (:

Stunning

I absolutely was stunned by this book, the beginning is kind of slow and hard to get through, but the ending ties everything together and makes it worthwhile. If you have a couple of hours of time, I'd highly recommend this short science fiction novel. :)