A review by wandering_not_lost
Leech by Hiron Ennes

tense medium-paced

4.0

I was drawn into this book by the promise of a weird parasitic doctor and really, my only regret is that there wasn't more of them.  

This was an interesting book, with a really fascinating use of...shifting points of view?  unreliable narrator? little of both?  The non-spoilery reasons are that even once I fully understood what the Institute was, the author deftly took the camera and turned it around, pulling back the curtain on the charming and solicitous main character I first met and showing the darkness underneath.  It was done very delicately and felt very natural (which was a nice change from Nona the Ninth, which I read immediately before and felt was using POV and unreliable narrators as a too-restrictive straight jacket to keep the reader needlessly guessing.)  
I did like the choice of having the main character be, essentially, a monster, as you slowly understand the Institute to be, and I think this is the first book I've ever read where the same "person" was both the antagonist and protagonist at varying points.


I also liked the book's setting - the reader slowly is introduced to the idea that this is set in some sort of far-future post-apocalyptic world where war or accident destroyed civilization and blasted folks back underground for generations before they climbed back out and re-captured what they could of humanity's technology.  As a result, the book reads kind of steampunkishly, with trains and dirigibles and clockwork hearts, but there's also bits of technology scattered about:  ancient automated weapon systems, scavenged plastics and alloys.  The setting also plays with gender in a way you don't see often:  the reader isn't really given one for the main character until about halfway through the book, and you have mention of what we'd consider trans characters, such as a character with he pronouns who talks about being a wet nurse.  It's nice to see this dealt with by almost all the characters in a very matter-of-fact way:  the characters and the story doesn't belabor it, so it's just a part of the world.

I did find the first half of the book more interesting than the second, though, so that's why this is 4 rather than 5 stars for me. 
I am a sucker for calm, competent monsters, so I was sorry to see the Institute's pov go in favor of Simone's more conventional escape story.  I also was just less interested in the more mundane (still horrible, but mundane) secrets and sins of the chateau's family.  Emile's story also felt like it came out a little too late, and was kind of too convenient in how it created a way for him and Simone to escape (...he set up explosives all through the house?  Really?).  And the scientist in me rolled my eyes, as usual, at gunshot wounds being treated as no big thing!  Shot in the shoulder?  No big deal, surely I can just go cross-country skiing for literally days right afterwards, with no real treatment, right?
  Still, I was entertained, and though it was a weird little book that kept its cards tight to its chest sometimes, after reading Nona the Ninth, this book was downright cake.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings