Borne Jeff VanderMeer 4th Estate €18.19

VanderMeer, the Yoda of ‘weird fiction’ whose Southern Reach trilogy starts hitting cinemas next year, shifts from that dubious Eden to an urban wasteland. Rachel and her enigmatic mate, Wick, fight to survive as their city hosts an escalating war between a powerful woman called the Magician and the Company, a creepy biotech facility. Into the couple’s knife-edge existence comes Borne, a lovable, murderous, squid-like entity that morphs from Rachel’s pseudochild to a strange threat and more. Awful in its violence and its vision of personal and global loss but also entertainingly imaginative, this is a near-future eco-fable of arresting richness.

Jeffrey Burke