3 stars

What an interesting book! The writing is from a different setting which forces you to pay attention to all the details. (I think I had a hard time with that)

I did enjoy how atmospheric this book felt. It was very, very descriptive. Again, maybe a bit too much because I was having a hard time understanding the importance of it at times. I’d also say this was on the verge of creepy!

Read if you like:
- Gothic + Vintage Era
- Slower Paced
- Unique Topics and Books

Atmospheric sci-fi that has some creepy crawlies mixed in? Sign me up.

Thank you so much to Macmillan-Tor for my review copy!

What a ... strange? book. Generally not my vibe, but I did very much enjoy the medical/gothic/horror vibe. Sincerely feel this is a love or hate book for most, but I land back on the fun but not my jam.

Hundreds of years ago humanity waged yet another war with itself. Who attacked who and why has long been forgotten. Those who survived created new lives for themselves, from the scorching southern deserts to the frozen northern wastelands. They were not alone however as a new life form had also decided to make a place for itself. It is a parasitic lifeform, inhabiting a wide array of hosts it protects itself by being useful. By shaping those it inhabits into doctors it ensures its survival in an otherwise cruel world.

All goes well for the little parasite until one of its bodies goes up north and finds there is another parasite and it too is trying to make a place for itself.

Like a number of readers and reviewers, allow me to start by saying that Leech by Hiron Ennes is unlike any book I have ever read. The best descriptor I can think of is strange. Also unique. Those are two words that come immediately to mind when I think of this book.

The narrator and main character is the parasite itself. The story is told from its point of view as it arrives at the baron’s secluded home to investigate its predecessor’s death. As it meets the baron’s family as well as the citizens of the tiny village nearby both it and we the reader, learn there is more to the story and not everyone is telling the whole truth.

I will admit that books told in the first person aren’t always my favorite. While I can understand the decision to use the first-person narrative, such as is done with Leech, it isn’t always effective. In this case, however, it is done well. We are there with the little parasite as it struggles with being so far from its other hosts and as it tries to make sense of what is happening around it. We are there as its nice and orderly way of thinking is turned upside down and for once it is truly afraid.

Leech is an incredibly dark and moody book, absolutely befitting the gothic genre. It certainly isn’t for everyone either. As I said above, Leech is strange and unique. It is the kind of story I had yet to encounter in all my time reading and reviewing. I quite enjoyed it and I encourage my readers to give it a chance.

There's not much I can say about this one without getting spoiler-y, but it's Gothic and body horror and medical horror and parasitology and post-apocalyptic. So if any of those are your jam, I think you'll like this!
3.5 stars
Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the ARC!

SUPER obsessed with this - made it a staff pick at work: "[Leech] melds genres easily as a Gothic sci-fi. Evoking The Fall of the House of Usher and the icy environment and paranoia of The Thing, this is a grotesque and unnerving exploration of genocide, colonization, and body autonomy." Would love to read more from Hiron Ennes.

Unfortunately this book wasn't the right fit for me. The concept sounded excellent and I did find myself intrigued to see where it was going, however I struggled to engage with the writing style. I'd definitely be open to reading more from this author in the future, but for now this one is a DNF.

Told from the first-person perspective, a parasite engineered and injected into host bodies are used to create highly specialized doctors. The story begins with a doctor being sent to a snowy remote castle to replace and investigate the death of their predecessor. While there, the doctor encounters another parasite that threatens their existence and the institution that created them. Along with this new parasite, the doctor's host body has a personal awakening and also discovers other strange things at this castle.

I really wanted to like this book - I am in the minority with my review since Goodreads is full of 4-5 star reviews. It had such a unique concept but it just didn't work out for me. I loved the super dark and creepy atmosphere in this dystopian world and the scientific jargon included throughout the story. My biggest gripe was with the alternating viewpoints/timelines that came off as disjointed and confusing. There were several points where I was geniually confused and thought I missed a few pages or misread something earlier in the book. However, I do believe that was purposefully done by the author - there was definitely undertones of real world issues intertwined in this story (such as gender identity, mental health, and abuse/grooming). Usually I am a sucker for extensive world building, however, this book had so much world building but somehow manages not to give enough detail/background to truly understand how this dystopian environment operates. The creepy, gory scenes were my favorite aspects of this book and I expected a lot more of that to be the forefront of this story. The ending of the book took a massive turn and left me disappointed.

“Soft sci-fi, gothic body horror” is how Hiron Ennes describes their debut novel, Leech (Tordotcom, 2022). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My interview with the author for New Books in Science Fiction (link below)

Leech is a slow-burn horror, closer to gothic literature than anything else but infused with science fiction elements. It centers around a parasitic hivemind that has hidden itself away from humanity by making itself indispensable - its human hosts make up the Institute, the source of all doctors and medical treatment in this strange, brutal world. The story starts with one of the Institute’s many bodies arriving at an isolated chateau to investigate the death of another one of its host bodies - a death that it cannot remember, despite the shared memories between all the hosts.

The slow, creeping dread that comes with this book is impeccably handled; reading this made me feel like the frog in the boiling frog apologue. By the time things had started to go wrong, things had really gone wrong. And I loved every minute of it. Everything slowly shifted to a very fever dream-like feeling before all the pieces slowly clicked into place. It’s a strange book with a unique writing style, but it’s a great, horrific read.

(i have received an e-arc from tor and netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

just like other gothic books i read and adored, Leech was one of my favorites. brimming with tight tension and a morally ambiguous protagonist, i adored this dark world.

What a cool novel! The juxtaposition of horror and sci-fi is always one I really love, and when you add in the element of historical fiction, it makes for a beautiful atmosphere.

A bewildering and beautiful blast of a book. Leech sucks you into its beguiling world from page one and never lets go. The secrets and lies of all the characters are extremely propulsive and make for compulsive reading.

A one-of-a-kind book. In a word, it's unique. In a remote Chateau, the baron's doctor has passed away. The replacement for the Institute's doctor has arrived, and with him come to a few mysteries. Unusually, the replacement has always used "host bodies." Creepy. The temporary physician also unearths a secret in the Chateau's underground passageways. I didn't know what to make of this gothic and fascinating novel. I found it challenging to get into this book, but I found the concept of one organism studying another fascinating. Creepiness level: upped. A cold atmosphere pervades the narrative as well. The book benefits from the creepy atmosphere it creates. This one-of-a-kind book was one I put down and picked up repeatedly. The originality of the writer is impressive. This book was difficult for me to comprehend. When the narrative finally started getting serious, it picked up the pace I find problematic in other novels with slow starts.
Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tordotcom, and NetGalley, who gave me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Leech is a baffling gothic body-horror-filled affair and one in which, I was not totally sold...at first. Intrigued? You should be. It's most likely the most inscrutable read of my entire year (2022 that is). I started Leech initially thinking I was getting a drafty cold chateau set in a bleak snowy landscape with a parasite on the loose—and it delivered that and much more. So much, in fact, that I initially gave up on it completely at a loss of what was occurring and resigned it to the DNF pile, but when I saw the audiobook, I decided to give it another shot. The narration was exactly what I needed to wade through the details and pique my interest again.

When we first meet the doctor, they are arriving by train through a wintry desolate landscape to the frozen grounds of the Château de Verdira. It's the perfect gothic setting. The doctor has come after the death of the previous doctor to uncover exactly what caused the death. From there it only gets stranger. The doctor is part of the "The Institute" and has only just arrived, but seems to know all the inhabitants of the Château already. How is this? Well, that's part of Leech's charm.

This book is dense. The language is stilted and the narrative constantly jumps; past, future, person to person, sometimes it's many voices at once in a strange mind share. The pacing is constantly speeding up and then slowing down. The setting seems primitive and yet the baron is kept alive by an innumerable amount of machinery, tubing, levers, and dials. There are talks of vestigial tails and a vendigeaux side by side with plastiophages and old nuclear plants. You get some answers, and more questions until it culminates in a fantastical ending. The trick of Leech is reading without the expectation to comprehend. It truly is dropping you in the middle of a myriad of things and tromping along until it makes sense in a very ah-ha manner.

It's a curious beast of medical horror, sci-fi, and old-school gothic. It's body horror all wrapped up in existential dread and dubious bodily autonomy. It's vivid, disgusting things of mucous and fluids, of black tendrils and blood. It's a difficult read, but one where you get to the end, sit back and ruminate before deciding whether or not you truly enjoyed the read.

I wanted to like Leech, but it wasn't. The premise was interesting and I normally love horror, but the execution was not for me. I had such a difficult time with the writing style.

SUMMARY: A doctor from “the institute” shows up to a rural north town in order to solve the mystery for how the former doctor died. As the story unravels, you discover that the new doctor is in fact the old doctor, but in a new body. The only problem is that he doesn’t remember what lead up to his death, or why he took his own life.

During an autopsy on his former body, the doctor discovers this black parasite behind his eye. Despite multiple tests and research, he cannot find anything similar to this “leech”. After checking every person in the estate, and the town, he surmised that he had to contract it from somewhere more remote— the mine.

REVIEW: Though the storyline of this book was decent, the pacing was much too slow for me. About halfway through the book, I was ready to put it down; I found myself skipping chapters to get to the end faster. You don’t get complete closure at the end of the book, but you do get to see the downfall of the Baron’s estate, and learn about the violence and corruption that is embedded in the household, and The Institute.

If you are a person who likes science, you may find the microbiology/virology/parasitology aspect interesting; the doctor does some decent analysis with microscopy, and testing on the samples to gain a better idea of the parasites ability to reproduce/survive.

RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

So insanely original and creepy. Tor continues to amaze me in the variety of horror the publish. Thank you to Tor Dot Com for the advanced copy

"I cannot quite understand these fables, nor can I discern their use. I suspect they are born from the peculiar, specific anxiety that there is something fundamentally fragile about humanness. The dread that perhaps, if one takes time to peel back the skin of another, they will find an imposter, a machine, or stranger still, something like me."

What a phenomenal debut! I spent the entirety of my time reading this in awe of Ennes' prose and descriptions. The medical body horror was so visceral. The decision to utilize first-person narration was a genius move, and it really made the experience all the more horrific. We got a front-row seat to the thoughts of a narrator that was anything but ordinary. The clinical interpretations of events were slowly marred by a budding sentimentality trying to give way to a long-buried personal identity.

In Leech, we follow the journey of a medical professional to a remote arctic village to take over as a family's in-house doctor. When they arrive, things are much more dire than expected: the previous doctor seems to have succumbed to the influence of an unidentified black, viscous parasite and taken his own life. What follows is a staggeringly sinister slow burn of a gothic tale, complete with uncomfortable eye-related body horror.

Leech was a spectacular look at what it means to be an individual, what we inherit from our ancestors, and the bounds of medical and technological progress. This book really got under my skin (pun intended!), and I can't wait to see what Ennes writes next!

I recieved a copy from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

I got 7 chapters into this novel and I just can't any longer. The synopsis sounds amazing and I was really excited about the novel and then...it was just so boring and confusing. There were parts where I zoned out because it was just like a nonsensical speech the narrator was making. The novel goes from this cool creepy horror to....a fancy dinner? What? It just did not makes sense and was not at all good enough to bother even continuing. Again, the synopsis sounded amazing and I was very excited and this was completely disappointing.