Faren Miller reviews The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer

The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 978-0-374-714932 $2.99, 86pp, eb) July 2017.

Jeff VanderMeer’s short novel The Strange Bird is a spinoff from the novel Borne, with the same background: a wrecked, far-future Earth, now be­ing devastated by techno/magical, quasi-mythic Company Wars. The title character was conjured in a lab where what had been a woman is turned into a creature that’s part avian and capable of flight. Though the lab won’t release its creations, she finds a way to escape, and early episodes chronicle her brief freedom.

All too soon she gets wounded, and seized by new captors: first The Old Man (a sadist with a manic compulsion to write on a typewriter that doesn’t really type); next the bizarre “bat-faced man”; then that creature’s boss, someone we’ve met before. The Magician seems to be a mad scientist, and plays a major role in Borne. Lying helpless in her lab, Strange Bird endures probes to show “what you’re made of.” Later experiments seem more like deconstruction, reducing Bird to something like a robe designed for camouflage.

Yet even ill-used remnants hold onto shreds of past consciousness – thanks to surreal “Dreams” where she is still a woman, talking with a close friend. One object from those dreams also makes the leap into waking life: an enigmatic “compass” that serves more like a beacon or alarm, calling for help. Eventually, what’s left of Strange Bird get caught up in the Wars, with surprising results. To say more would be a spoiler.