Somewhere in the icy, fog-choked region where "Gormenghast" overlaps with "The Thing" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" sits "Leech", an imaginative blend of Gothic horror and body horror told from a unique viewpoint.

It's fairly fast-paced and an easy read, but around the edges of the plot there's a lot of interesting world-building for those who like to connect dots and come up with conjectures. A very skillfully written book, and highly recommended.

leech merges many genres & it’s over all outcome is brilliant!!! Gothic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi & speculative fiction. The book is also metaphors for colonialism, capitalism & SA. With some fables thrown in.

Leech is probably one of the strangest books I’ve ever read.. but one of the best. It’s very original. Imagine you were looking at humanity through a microscope and you were able to see everything about humanity & patterns. In the beginning things appear quite ordinary (very human) but alongside the narrator this world is very unordinary.

The best way I can describe Leech is like this .. it’s like you’re having a conversation with someone and you’re not entirely sure what they’re on about but you don’t want to appear stupid so you carry & pretend. Then another person comes into the conversation & they start talking more in depth but you’re still kind of unsure because things aren’t really been explained. The prose is very mysterious like its narrator - things are revealed slowly but not explained… if that makes sense. Everything is revealed at the right time but at the same time I’ve never read a book like it. The tone of the prose has a strong 19th century writing style which i loved! It also has a little classic feel to it. The book is very confusing at times but with pseudo-omniscience it was very well written.

This is a hard review for me to write there are details which I think is best left to the reader to discover on their own. For me giving these details would ruin the experience.. annoyingly quite a few reviewers have done this & not given a spoiler warning.

My only issue with leech was thus, There is SA scene which in my opinion was unnecessary & came out of no where. There was already violation to one of the characters which I think was a metaphor for this anyway & towards the end things did kind of spiral. Also I should add none of the characters are extremely likeable.

This book started out very well with an interesting plot that I was pretty excited to get into but quickly lost its way the major event happened in the middle then very quickly lost pace and I found myself only reading on to see if it got better. Bit of a disappointing ending with way top much trying to happen in a short space of time. Maybe with another read it would be better but for me I wouldn’t read it again

I picked up Leech ages ago out of mild curiosity and left it to linger in my to-be-read pile. I started reading it because I couldn’t decide on anything else to read.

And I couldn’t stop reading it.

It’s a horrifying premise of parasites and secrets. And it’s a pleasure to read a book by a writer who doesn’t spoonfeed you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve missed a few things or two as I frantically turned pages to find out what happens next. This is a book that will reward a reread.

It’s creepy. It’s sad. It’s horrifying. It’s moving. It definitely doesn’t deserve to wait around for you in a to-be-read pile.

In an isolated town, the Baron’s Doctor is found dead. The Medical Institute , that is the only supplier of medical personnel, sends a new doctor, he finds the old one was infected with a parasite. That is impossible as all Doctors are already possessed.

This is difficult to explain, the main character is a body possessed by an intelligent symbiotic life form that is in countless other bodies and whose mind sees through the eyes of all of them, like a hive mind. Then along comes competition, an invasive parasite that lives inside humans. Unlike the Institute who has for hundreds of years replaced all doctors and chooses the brightest minds, the new threat is not so choosy.

This is gothic horror with an almost sci-fi twist, the language is archaic and very much of the gothic period and this can take some getting used to but the writing is beautiful and evocative. There is tension throughout the story but it is weirdly compelling. The creeping invasive parasites, the cold, harsh, unforgiving land, the heartless hardened people, the atmosphere feels heavy and malignant. A fascinating read.

Very creepy imagery, a clever storyline and well imagined world. Gripping and disturbing. Gave me nightmares. Would definitely recommend this book

The title & cover were enough to capture my interest without even reading the blurb. It still begs the question - what on earth have I just read? Gothic, creepy & weird - I couldn’t read it in one hit; I had to process it gradually.

The baron’s doctor dies at an isolated chateau. His eerie replacement arrives & discovers something in the mines deep below the chateau.

I don’t generally read horror & although this is not strictly in that genre, oh my, I did recoil in places. Unique in storyline, a quirky writing style (which may put some readers off) & definitely different.

I usually love horror but this was dull and monotonous. Plodded along.

I love to find a book that tells a story I’ve not heard before. “Leech” is just such a book with an amazing story. I traveled down passages I’ve never even considered. It is a difficult read in the beginning, but the story gradually reveals itself to the reader and finishing it is well worth the effort.

The author regularly challenged my vocabulary and I had it use the kindle dictionary. But it wasn’t done in an obnoxious way. The words chosen fit with the dystopian ageless feel the book created. At once, I felt as if I were in Victorian England and in the our earth’s bleak future. This feeling started on the first page and permeated throughout the book.

What also impressed me is the description of sexual violence. The writing was elegant, not graphic, which actually made the horror of it all the more terrifying.

I found it to be an amazing novel, and was stunned to discover this is the authors first book. I look forward to reading everything this author writes.

I felt like this would have been an excellent short story, and really painful as a full novel. I see a lot of people enjoy it, perhaps my read was off but I would not recommend.

Worthy of several sequels. Loved this book. ❤️

I bought this novel to read it during a business trip while on a train. Surpassed my - admittedly low - expectations. I mean, the book was labelled "unputdownable" (!) by marketing. But it actually proved to be to me. I continued with it way after I was back home from my two day trip. I think it captures what you could call a Lovecraftian atmosphere, not because it has some of the Great Old Ones in it, but in the way the whole world appears hostile to its inhabitants with horrors beyond the imagination of its human inhabitants. I never witnessed a similarly unique main character - the world building and the power of imagination that went into building this world and the characters is fantastic. I could almost feel the icy cold winter. I also liked the writing style - definitely better than Lovecraft, which does not mean much because he was a pretty bad writer in my opinion - despite having great world building capabilities. Only thing I disliked was the massive use of flashbacks to draw on the background of the main characters. I would probably have voted 5 stars without that.

A disturbing examination of what makes a person, memories, experiences or the physicality of a body- all these things or the stories of existence living outside of and all around life forms.