I think I actually enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Borne. I love that there are a few moments that answer questions we're left with when Borne ends. Nothing huge, but little curiosities, just like this book in general.

Favorite quote: "That if they could not have a fierce joy in their struggle, then they were not truly free but governed by fear and doubt." (p. 82) ( )

Man I forgot how much I love Jeff VanderMeer. This book was a great little reminder of the Borne universe before I get the next book in the series on hold. The Strange Bird had a great voice to follow and a really disturbing and tragic story. Humans suck. Some are ok but mostly they suck. ( )

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. ( )

In a beautifully written novella, Jeff VanderMeer has given us the story of the Strange Bird, a minor character from his novel, "Borne". The bird is a construct: part bird, part human, part other things. Told by the bird itself, its story from life to death is both wonderfully uplifting and ultimately tragic and yet…

This is how the story begins:

"The Strange Bird’s first thought was of a sky over an ocean she had never seen, in a place far from the fire-washed laboratory from which she emerged, cage smashed open but her wings, miraculous, unbroken. For a long time the Strange Bird did not know what sky really was as she flew down underground corridors in the dark, evading figures that shot at one another, did not even know that she sought a way out. There was just a door in a ceiling that opened and a scrabbling and scrambling with something ratlike after her, and in the end, she escaped, rose from the smoking remnants below. And even then she did not know that the sky was blue or what the sun was, because she had flown out into the cool night air and all her wonder resided in the points of light that blazed through the darkness above. But then the joy of flying overtook her and she went higher and higher and higher, and she did not care who saw or what awaited her in the bliss of the free fall and the glide and the limitless expanse.
Oh, for if this was life, then she had not yet been alive!"

I may have enjoyed this novella even more than the novel, but it is perhaps not fair to compare the two as if they were like things. [The Strange Bird] is a seductive and transportive tale that can, more or less, be read without having read the novel first. ( )

Another chance to visit the world of Borne - same time period and location. I don't want to spoil even a second of it for Borne lovers, so I'll say no more except read it! ( )