A very bizarre story indeed. I feel I need to read it again to take it all in. It follows a doctor travelling to a remote land that is inaccessible most of the time due to weather conditions. He is to replace his predecessor that has been killed by some strange organism that has been found in the mountain and trying to take over. But also, the doctors are some virus that takes over men's bodies and trains them to become medical doctors....I just don't know. People are probably going to love this book but for me it was way to out of my comfort zone.

“No one wants to meet what lives in the night out here.”

Leech by Hiron Innes is a truly bizarre dark tale. It tells of an institute which possess the brains of the young population by rooting in their minds to grow successful doctors to replace all human practitioners of medicine. This institute has to send one of their best to an isolated chateau to tend to the Baron as his doctor has suddenly died. All signs point towards suicide however after examination it seems a parasite had taken host of the doctor causing his death. This parasite is spreading fast and poses a threat to the institute. It soon becomes a race against time to locate the source of this parasite and a fight for control by these two over the human body once again.

This novel was an addictive read. After the first couple chapters I was hooked and needed more background on this bizarre institute and their ways. The story unfolds around the baron’s doctor being dead and another being sent to investigate. There are many characters to keep an eye on throughout, they pop up now and again and you get that sense of something darker at work here.

The suspense and horror permeates from the very beginning, even though things are being explained through the characters and events, this eerie isolated place gets under the readers skin. The imagery was more than just disturbing at times it was grotesque yet borderline beautiful.

The novel is described as gothic science fiction which you get the sense of immediately. As it progresses it keeps that dark atmosphere every present which for me made it an enjoyable read.

Very interesting concept and I was drawn to the obscure cover art. The story itself was imaginative and definitely not the sort of genre I've read much before ( it is very body horror-y be warned!), however the writing fell flat for me. Something about it just felt a bit too dense, and i found myself losing interest. I feel like this book would definitely work for people into obscure, weird, horrory type books but, this one just wasn't for me and I don't have a lot to say about it.

To keep things short and to the point, I loved this book! The characters, the story, the writing style…love it.
It’s got something reminiscent of the olde-style horror about it. Which I’m totally here for.
You were never quite where you thought you were whilst reading it, the story was in a constant state of flux.
It had me gripped from the very beginning, and I struggled to put it down, so I’d read it in bed until I fell asleep and the kindle fell off the bed.
Can’t recommend this one enough.
Thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for my arc.

Fantastic read that kept me gripped from start to finish. It was dark and disturbing with lots of drama and suspense. Highly recommended.

I had no idea what was going on in this entire story, it felt like the moment I found my feet, something would shift and change my entire perspective on the book. The way that the gothic and sci-fi was blended together was incredible. The interesting - and slightly confusing at first - premise to this book is that the main character and narrator is a doctor. Who is controlled by a parasitic hivemind with centuries worth of medical experience through hundreds of hosts, under the guise of a company called the Institute. I finished this book with a strange feeling of awe. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like this before. It was the same feeling I had when I finished Gideon the Ninth - which my followers will know is my favourite book - it was so *different* that I didn’t know what to feel.

The audiobook was well performed. The accents were excellent and created a real sense of character and the audio performance created a lot of depth particularly when it came to the conversations that our main character had with themselves. It could have been confusing to listen to, but the writing and performance made it so smooth and easy to understand.

The writing is reminiscent of old classic horror, and I got a lot of the same vibes from LEECH as I did from Frankenstein - which is damn high praise, really. Still it wasn’t so classical as to be difficult to parse, and even through audiobook it was still incredibly accessible and easy to read. Within a chapter or two I was so wholly immersed that I had adapted completely to the writing style. This was a single-sitting book for sure, and even weeks after reading I was still thinking about this book constantly. I can’t wait to see what else Hiron Ennes writes because I know it’s going to be incredible.

There is a lot of gore and body horror in this book, and I love gory horror so when I say that this took me aback at moments, you know it’s real gross. It’s graphic and doesn’t shy away from showing the worst sides of its characters - be they parasitic creatures or regular awful humans. It was raw and dark reading and I absolutely adored it, but I don’t think it’s for the faint of heart. Don’t be fooled by classical writing, this is a new kind of horror novel.

Why, and how, do people in this world keep going? The answer is a little different for everyone. For Baker, it might be pleasures of the flesh—a smoke and a drink and company at the local pub. For Émile, it might be the courage and warmth of the kennel dogs. For Priest, it might be the caretaking of an oral tradition, fantastic tales of falling skies and men becoming monsters who breathe winter wind. For the Institute, it’s a steady diet of lies. And for Ennes? The book’s concluding chapters lead me to believe that, for Ennes, the ability to fight back is reason enough to keep going. For Leech ends in struggle and gore and uncertainty, in a prolonged fight that is as joyous as it is terrible. Success is far from assured, but the fight is everything.
-- Seamus Sullivan

I sadly struggled with this book.
I liked parts of it but other parts confused me.
I think it may be due to the arc having multiple typos and missing letters.
I will probably pick this book up at some point physically and reread it to see if I will enjoy it more.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately the netgalley I received was completely illegible.

I have heard great things and will purchase instead. Leaving an average score so as not to tip ratings

What an interesting read. This book sits squarely in a horror/sci-fi niche to me with a gothic twist that made me feel like I was reading lost novel from past times. The use of gothic prose though got a little distracting to me and, I found at times, I needed to take a break from reading this due to not 100% understanding what the author meant in certain sections. For me, if you enjoy gothic horror and want something fresh/unique to read then I would say give this a go.

I thought this was going to give me A Cure for Wellness vibes but it just missed the mark for me. The characters were fine and generally developed enough but it just felt off overall. I thought the vibe it had was good and thought it added to the story well. The actual writing was good and i thought that it had a good pace but it just wasn't the novel that i exactly expected at the end of the day.

Exploring the truly inhuman is something fantasy and science fiction can do with a little more ease than other genres. WE can imagine the not human and what they may say. How do they see humans and how they act can tell us a lot about ourselves too. In Hiron Ennes unusual novel Leech we get to explore that with an unusual lifeform hiding in plain sight among people and indeed actually hiding among many people in plain sight and meets a powerful force that may be its equal and seeks its own destruction.

The Institue is a well-known network of doctors around the land. Tending to the sick and injured it is well respected if occasionally thought to be strange. In reality though its a centuries old conscious parasite that has continually taken hosts and operates across the world as a hive mind. But in one remote corner the Institue is disturbed at one of it’s hosts deaths allegedly at its own hands. Taking a more active interest it despatches a new host across to investigate and in a rowdy aristocratic family it meets a new parasite that may be about to bring competition at last.

I appreciated Leech for being a very unusual story and it really does have from the start an unusual first-person narrator - The Institute itself! Ennes gives us a narrator who is very dispassionate and has the air of the scientist using constant scientific and medical terms, but we soon realise they do not see themselves as human - they’re ultimately a predator among us but one that sees humans as something to collaborate with and but also often to give it new host bodies. They’re so dispassionate that you may feel they’re a good person and then you see their occasional actions across the world. Not necessarily an unreliable narrator but one who we have to decode how they see the world.

The mystery is compelling and here Ennes manages to give us some very solid new weird worldbuilding and descriptions. We are in some form of post-apocalyptic society re-bullding itself very slowly. We may hear of nuclear reactors, machines lurking in rivers for the unwary and people who scavenge plastic; but we also have almost a 19th century world of Barons, miners and dilapidated priests. It is a grubby, tired and faulty world that probably suits the Institutes purposes a lot. But via the narration its captivating a sense of so much to explore and understand. But be warned there are many scenes of body horror that may me too much for some readers

I won’t explain the mystery too much; but the book does change directions in a way I did not see coming but ultimately although a short novel I did find the pacing a little too slow for my tastes. Its only around halfway this picks up and then takes its final direction and I did wonder if a novella would have been more effective.

Overall Leech has impressive writing and creates an unusual reading experience that fans of the New Weird would definitely enjoy just to see how it works in the 2020s. It is a more literary take on storylines we usually see in movies like The Thing - not for everyone but intriguing enough to try.

What a premise! and what a complex novel this is.

I found this book absolutely fascinating. It is most definitely a slow burn, with a creeping eeriness that builds as it goes. It is a deeply unsettling novel, and one worth taking your time with. This sort of story can't be rushed, to breeze past it is to miss the point. You have to sit with it, you have to be enveloped by it. You have to feel the tendrils wind their way about you... you need to feel the chills.

This is the sort of horror that has layers - quiet and brooding, with a touch of sci-fi and a hint of thriller, this is a fantastic moody horror debut.

Hiron Ennes is one to watch folks, I simply can't wait to see what surreal delights await us next!

Thanks so much to Tor for allowing me to read Leech in exchange for an honest review.

If you mixed Gormenghast with The Thing, you might come close to the reality of what reading Leech is like.

Set in the Chateau Veridia,as well as outposts in the same world , this snow set medical/body horror/alternate world set fiction is an incredible,genre spanning yet genre defiant novel is unlike anything you will ever read.

The protagonist is highly unique and unusual in that they don't exist, and yet they inhabit multiple bodies and realities. It is a parasite who we are introduced to on a train ride to the Chateau, on their way to investigate the death of the baron's personal doctor.

What quickly comes clear is that the doctor is also one of the hosts of the parasite,and has acted without the parasite even knowing. The fear engendered in this parasite who has an absolute level of control exerted over its host bodies, is exquisite and terrifying.

So there is this snow covered castle run by a family of incredibly odd creations that bring to mind Geek Love, mingled with truly horrifying scenes of dismemberment , a mystery of who,or what killed the doctor,and a steampunk-esque society that they all inhabit.

And that barely scratches the surface of the originality that Leech has oozing out of every page.

There is so much to say on the nature of identity, who you essentially are and how it differentiates from what society expects you to be.

A leech,a parasite is what we all are, we cannot exist without taking from the environment we are living in. So when we dive beneath the surface of what we do to survive, how can you tell who is good, who is bad, and how we can live in symbiosis?

By the end of the first chapter, a hideous act of death, extraction and a snow laden train journey all combined to make this book un-putdownable. I was deeply engaged and honestly resents anything and everything which tried to drag my attention away

This is essential reading for any horror fan , anyone who adores gothic literature and is destined to be endlessly talked about and dissected in much the same manner that the narrator takes himself apart.

This was a very Creepy and disturbing story. I really wanted to love this book but I think maybe I am not in the right headspace for it right now. Hope to enjoy it more on a reread in the future. Giving a neutral rating for now.

It was out of my comfort zone but I loved this mix of thriller, horror, and gothic.
It's dark, twisty, and gripping. A very interesting and well plotted book.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Unfortunately this is a DNF from me. The ARC is very poorly formatted, rendering it almost unreadable, but what I did read did not grip me and I was bored and not intrigued enough

This book sounded so very promising but sadly I struggled with it due to it coming across as trying to be really clever and it ended up being a little too complex to enjoy for me. It was creepy though!

3.5 stars
A unique, weird gothic tale with a deadly parasite, set in a dystopian world.

This is a story of a doctor who arrives at a countryside castle to replace his predecessor as a local medic serving the community, but we soon find out the previous doctor's death was suspicious. From there on, we're following the first person's narrative of the new healer as he discovers more dark secrets about the castle's inhabitants as well as a parasite that threatens the lives of the whole community.

I'm not sure how to rate this book, so let's look at the things I liked and the things I didn't.
The idea and the main character of this story are very unique, even if they don't sound like it, and I appreciated it. The gothic atmosphere was there, within the old castle and the village isolated from the rest of the world by a harsh winter.
But, what I must say is that there was a part that dragged for me near the middle, where we had the set-up, but the events of the story haven't progressed yet and I think this could have been tightened. Another thing I had an issue with is that the story felt messy in places - we got some legends, some mentions of the past, but they were never enough to build a cohesive picture of the world we were in. I still don't understand it and it felt like these elements just filled the space without serving a purpose.

But all in all, if you like weird stories with isolated settings, some body horror and deadly parasites ("The Troop', anyone?), give it a go!

Wow, an incredible dystopian fantasy novel that makes you confront so much of your preconceived notions. I don't want to say much for fear of spoilers. I actually finished this over a month ago, but have been sitting on writing the review because there was so much to process. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the writing—I found it way too dense at times, and even after reading two or three times, I was left none the wiser about what had just been said.

Nevertheless, one of my top fantasy reads of the year.

(Review copy from NetGalley)