Book Review - Hiron Ennes's Leech
Leech by Hiron Ennes
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: September 27th, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Before the inhabitants of the chateau can send word to Inultus and the Institute that the Baron's doctor has died a new doctor has arrived, unexpectedly stepping down from the train in Verdira. The mystery though isn't how the Institute knew to send a new doctor the mystery is how the previous doctor died. The Institute's body is one, spread out all over the world. Their knowledge is shared, their knowledge is sole, therefore to not know something that happened to one of their own is truly a mystery. And they do not know how the doctor died at the chateau in the far north. They should have remembered the cause of death not just the death. The new doctor arrives and immediately starts to investigate. Trying to fill in the gaps in their memory. What could have killed this host? And there it is. The answer, waiting in their corpse for discovery; a competitor. Another parasite trying to take root. A parasite capable of killing. Because the Institute keeps their secrets to themselves the residents of the chateau do not realize they are dealing with someone who has walked their corridors for years. The Baron's son Didier, Didier's pregnant wife Helene, excluding their twins all believe that the doctor is a new entity and therefore are spending needless time introducing them to how life works at the chateau. While the doctor views this all as an inconvenience. The competition must be found, examined, studied, and then eliminated. Luckily dinner is the only time when the household assembles and no one has ever made it to dessert under the Baron's gimlet glare therefore there is plenty of time for hunting the parasite. But where could the previous body have encountered it? In a flash it comes to them, the mine. The chateau gets it's money from a wheatrock mine and there was a collapse. Something in the dark. They must return to the mine. They get the houseboy Émile to help, risking the wintry weather to find their enemy. But what if that is exactly what the enemy wants? What if returning to the mine brings the parasite back to the chateau? What if it is all happening again and there's no stopping another death and another? The Institute has bodies to spare, but does the Baron's doctor?
To have a gestalt entity be your narrator is a ballsy move. But Hiron Ennes makes it work because they have such a strong authorial voice. I often found myself questioning if someone capable of such confident worldbuilding was truly a first time author and then, when the book completely fell apart at the end, I found myself no longer asking that question. The problem is this book is dealing with big issues from bodily autonomy to class warfare to climate change on a more intimate scale. Yes we see the macro, but only filtered through the eyes of one part of the whole. And it's the continual narrowing of the vision which in the end is Leech's downfall. When the gestalt entity loses connection to the greater whole at first it's interesting. How can someone used to being something more thrive? The answer is they can't. Of course what's really happening is that the original personality is coming through. The parasitic infection is losing it's hold. And the original personality coming through is where everything falls apart. That and the fact that there really is no ending. But more on that later. Once the original personality is back in control there's a disconnect. You have forged such a connection to the gestalt entity that even though you are revolted by everything they stand for you're also somehow rooting for them. And the hints and flashes of the original personality coming through actually doesn't connect you to that character but seems to be used more to understand the world they are living in and how this entity got a foothold. The original personality should be who we are rooting for, but instead they are flat and lifeless. And that's why the last quarter of this book is such a disappointment. This world and the characters that people it are so interesting and unnerving. You feel restless and ill at ease reading Leech but at the same time you don't want to leave the Swiss Chateaux with all it's Gothic goodness and Frankensteinian vibes. But Hiron Ennes's "burn it all down" vibe that takes over the last quarter of the book while logical in the Mary Shelley sense just feels rushed. And our two protagonists riding a train off into the sunset? It somehow discounts all that came before. What is the message? That escaping from trauma is a victory even if your continued survival is questionable? And while that might be true in life this is fiction. There could have been more solidity and less ambiguity and it's only subpar Gothic literature that doesn't understand this imperative.
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
