A Few More Thoughts On: Leech by Hiron Ennes

How do you review a book like Hiron Ennes’ Leech, a novel that’s as disturbing as it is compelling, in which a theoretically benign parasitical distributed consciousness has possessed the entire population of medical practitioners, but finds itself in unwanted, unexpected competition when it stumbles upon a new, opposing parasite? It’s a book that does things entirely its own way, with a blatant disregard for normal genre conventions that somehow really works but which makes it very, very hard to talk about without giving spoilers. Well, I did manage to write a review, which you can read here, but this book is so strange and so damn good that I want to tell as many people about it as possible. If there’s any author’s work that Leech reminds me of, it’s the brilliant Peter Fehervari, so I thought I’d add a few more thoughts about that comparison.

First though, let’s have a look at the publisher’s synopsis:

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute’s body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron’s castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

Sounds…mad, right? Mad, but brilliant. In my regular review I attempt to describe – without spoilers – the tone and feel of the book, its weirdness (I mean, how does one come up with the idea of a parasitic gestalt consciousness possessing hundreds of doctors?), the way that nothing is quite what it seems, and the sheer unconventionality of the story. It’s a book that does things in its own unique way, and I haven’t read anything quite like this before, but it’s that very sense of individuality, and of not settling for a single obvious genre, that reminds me of Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil series. Regular ToW readers will know how much I love Fehervari’s writing, and I’d say that Leech is the closest I’ve come yet to a book that feels like it could be part of the Dark Coil.

If you’re wondering who Peter Fehervari is and what The Dark Coil is, you can learn all about it by reading my ‘Traveller’s Guide to the Dark Coil’ article. In essence the Dark Coil is, in the author’s words, “a vast tangle of plot threads that extends across space and time, connecting characters, places and events, often in bizarre ways, with people ‘slipping’ from one story into another, occasionally via fissures in the skin of reality.” Peter predominantly writes in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, but interestingly when I reviewed his standalone (i.e. non-40k) short story Bleeding From Cold Sleep I mentioned that it matched many of the Dark Coil’s themes: “a dark and ice-bound frontier world, a hidden taint lurking beneath the surface, a constant undercurrent of suspicion and doubt, and a main character made up of layers upon layers of accreted identities and beliefs.” That sentence almost perfectly describes Leech, too!

The similarities struck me right from the first few pages in Ennes’ richly detailed and genuinely beautiful prose, engagingly dark atmosphere, and determination not to spoon feed the reader with up-front world building or exposition, but rather trust that they will follow along and pick up the details as they’re offered. This shares a sort of artistic integrity with Fehervari’s writing, with a similar sense of a world with its own rules and conventions which aren’t necessarily always visible to the reader, but are consistently followed by the author. A similar feeling of subtle, creeping dread, of characters spiralling along their own twisted path that will see them tested physically, emotionally, psychologically and even spiritually. It’s a book that’s disturbing in a low-key, unsettling way, but impossible to look away from, and anyone who’s read a Dark Coil story will feel right at home here.

Of course this is still very much its own thing, and I’m making the comparison with Fehervari not to say that they’re the same but rather because there’s so little else I’ve ever come across that compares to the eerie darkness of this novel and the sheer sense of “what the hell did I just read?” If you’ve never read any Fehervari and still have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s just say that if you have any interest in the strange, unsettling, slowly shifting sort of horror, in gothic horror mixed with psychological horror mixed with creepy creatures and occasional flashes of body horror, then I would definitely recommend you check out The Dark Coil. I would also confidently say that Leech is definitely worth getting hold of too! It’s a book that challenges the reader to keep up, that is a rewarding read if not necessarily an easy read, and that is quite frankly unlike anything you’re likely to have read before. Sort-of-relatable POV parasite versus horrible, creepy, black-tendrilled-lives-behind-eyeballs parasite? Sinister, decrepit house full of mad aristocrats, creepy twins and terrified servants, snowed-in and utterly isolated? Bring it on.

If you haven’t already, check out my regular review of Leech here.

Leech is out now from Tor/Tor UK – check out the links below to order your copy:

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