Leech

by Hiron Ennes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was so unsettling and creepy and exactly what I wanted it to be. There are elements of confusion as you read that work so well for the story. As you get further into the story and everything unravels, those confusing elements start to make sense and just makes the plot that more exciting. The author has done a great job of writing a hive mind being as a main character. The way these facts and various secrets are revealed was done in such a nice way. It never left like the audience was sent running in circles nor that everything was handed to us in awkward monologues. It was a shocking rollercoaster of emotions the entire way through.

All My Thoughts

May contain spoilers.

I was blown away by this book. I knew going in that there was a hivemind aspect to the character and that fascinated me. The author did a terrific job of writing this character! There was the right amount of confusion early in the narrative. We are not handed explanations or monologues that didn’t flow naturally just to explain anything to us. This really let everything flow smoothly.

I have so many complicated feelings about the main character, but all of them good. (While the main character is a hive mind that controls numerous bodies of all genders, it is revealed that the one the story follows is a female body so I will be using she/her pronouns.) She is at once the protagonist and one of her own antagonists as well. Once this entity loses the ability to communicate with her other parts, the manic spiral grows intense and fascinating. I really enjoyed seeing the reactions to a being with similar motives essentially invading her territory, Earth, and the way she reacts to the intrusion. It is an interesting look at what happens when one is not at the top of the evolutionary chain anymore.

Again the way the main character slowly slips into mania made the whole story so unsettling because after a while you didn’t know who was safe to trust and who wasn’t right along with her. Each of the secondary characters were perfect counterbalances to her as well. I found that the main character was just as interesting when no longer controlled by the hive mind. This blend of essentially two characters in one body was fascinating.

This is a story I wish was either longer or had more books planned. It ended in such a way that left so much unanswered, but in a way that made sense. It would have been impossible to wrap it up in one book, if at all. I would love to see more from this world or these characters.

Overall

This was a fantastically unsettling book. Well written and paced in a way that makes you not want to put it down.

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