Hiron Ennes’ Leech is eerily good, an unsettling tale of parasites, shared consciousness and collective history that’s quietly creepy and endlessly compelling. In a bleak, ravaged world, the Interprovincial Medical Institute has cornered the market in medical personnel…by possessing the body of every living doctor, sharing its gestalt awareness across countless physical forms. When one of its number dies in a remote snow-shrouded château, it simply sends another to take its place. When the replacement arrives however, it finds that its predecessor’s death was far from natural, with a horrifying parasite having taken root in that body. As a bitter winter closes in and the presence of its distant bodies fades, the château’s doctor is soon trapped inside with the fractious residents, few real resources, and an insidious, unseen but utterly deadly enemy.
A mind-bending tale full of cognitive dissonance, complicated identities, sinister folklore, hazy half-memories and distant allusions, Leech is hard to talk about without giving spoilers but absolutely worth reading for anyone interested in strange, unconventional horror stories. After all, the protagonist here is a distributed, parasitical consciousness with hundreds of bodies under its sway, which takes umbrage at the discovery of another (albeit deeply disturbing) parasite that threatens its identity, and possibly its existence. And that’s only the tip of the weird iceberg! Events take place mostly in and around the creepy confines of the château, all faded grandeur and chilly corridors, populated by a family of fairly awful aristocrats and unhappy, put-upon servants. The wider reality of the setting is gradually explored too, a sort of post-apocalyptic world with ambiguous hints of past catastrophes, trying to rebuild itself from scraps of ancient knowledge.
To keep things manageable the narration is all from the perspective of a single body – the château’s new doctor – whose own personality starts to surface as the presence of the Institute wanes. It’s very much a story about shifting perspectives though, blending a gothic tone with a distinct sense of psychological horror (not to mention bits of everything from creature feature to body horror) to explore questions of identity, the fear of impostors, and a descent into madness by way of the dreamlike blurred lines between reality and unreality, present and past. Nothing is quite what it seems to begin with, and elements of the world building and the characters’ backstories are slowly unveiled at often unexpected moments and to unsettling, surprising effect. It’s also a story about monsters and their victims, some of which are interchangeable, with almost every character finding themselves trapped – by circumstance, by family, by station, by the snow and the cold and the isolation.
This is a fascinating novel, strange and dark and determined not to take the easy route, and with a voice and an identity all of its own. It’s certainly not an easy read in the way the narrative is structured and certain pieces of information are withheld, but even at its most disturbing (and it really does get quite bizarre) it’s utterly impossible to put down. What ties it all together and makes everything work is Ennes’ genuinely beautiful prose, which brings the world and the characters to such vivid, horrifying life that you can almost feel the cold and see the squirming black tendrils of impossible parasitic life. A book about two appalling, inhuman parasites battling for control and survival really shouldn’t be this compelling, but the mind-bending concepts – including the ultimate expression of talking to oneself – make a strange kind of sense, and somehow the alien existential crisis at the heart of this story ends up feeling very human. This won’t be for everyone, but horror fans looking for something properly weird, and challenging in all the best ways, will find a lot to enjoy.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Leech is out now from Tor/Tor UK – check out the links below to order your copy:
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