Two physical books I purchased while traveling last month, the RPG rulebook Mörk Borg and the Jeff VanderMeer novel Borne, have something in common on their covers, neither of which I discovered until well into my ownership of either: “secret” images or messages, applied in some kind of clear material that is literally invisible in direct light but shines when viewed obliquely.

The spine of Mörk Borg has hidden letters interleaved among those of the book’s title, running down its spine, spelling “P S A L M VII”. This is a reference to the Final Misery of the game’s setting, the inexorable doom that that shall bring an end to all other suffering through one last dreadful eclipse, and of which I shall write no more.

The front cover of Borne is a little more subtle; the reader might notice some uncertain streaks around the edges of the softcover book’s artwork, and take them as just part of the cover’s already surreal and ambiguous portrait of the eponymous shapeshifting creature that the book’s plot turns on. But sooner or later they’ll happen to glance at the cover while the book lay closed on their tabletop, and see the gaping, roaring maw of a bear lunging at them, aieee! This being a reference to the novel’s main antagonist. Who is a bear.

I don’t at present know what this printing technique is called, but it seems to be a trend. It’s fun.

Borne is great, by the way. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world of uncertain identity, where—as in Mörk Borg—things are so hopelessly teetering on the end that the straggling survivors often don’t bother naming things. There is only “the city”, lying in hopeless ruin, drowning in bio-engineered poisons and horrors. No characters have any sense of shared civilizational history, beyond cloudy personal memories they carry. So when a young scavenger finds a strange and warm green lump tangled in the filthy fur of the kaiju-sized flying bear she’s picking through for salvage, she is overwhelmed with novelty, and takes it home, and names it, and falls in love with it. And then things get complicated.

Compared to VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, from a decade ago, Borne has a traditional structure and a straight-shooting narrator, and I can generally recommend it to all enjoyers of modern weird fiction.