L = Leech by Hiron Ennes

The Interprovincial Medical Institute has taken it upon itself to protect us, from ourselves. A parasitic orgnaization, it infects young minds and turns selected children into doctors. It monopolizes the medical profession entirely, forcing its human hosts into a co-dependent relationship.

Baron de Verdira, a cruel ruler in a desperate countryside, is heavily reliant on the Institute's expertise to keep himself alive. His old doctor died under mysterious circumstances and it will be up to his replacement to unravel the horrors in Chateau de Verdira, just as a bitter winter descends.

The baron's new doctor discovers a dangerous parasite infestation, other than its own. A strange creature with probing black legs, that's quietly propagating and subsequently killing its hosts. As the doctor investigates the newly discovered parasite, she begins to realize there is more infecting the residents of Verdira than parasites. 

Leech by Hiron Ennes is being market as a "debut"novel. What a delicious debut it is. The prose reads like it was written in an older decade, the dialogue modern and gut-wrenching. The setting is open to interpretation; it could be an alternate world, similar to ours, or it could be ours, a thousand years in the future after technology became our undoing. To me, it feels like a future us.

Hiron Ennes takes some of the best cliches of Gothic horror - a castle overlooking a desolate countryside, a winter that chills to the bone, things that creep and crawl in the dark - and breathed new life into them. Past and present are expertly woven together to create a story that's rich in atmosphere as it is in suspense. An anti-hero narrates, hypocritically so, her fight against a terrifying antagonist. She's determined to secure the survival of a species, just not necessarily ours.

The sickly Baron, who doesn't hide his violence, and his perversion of a family sit in juxtaposition with our protagonist who is actively trying to help people, forces the question: Who is good, who is evil, and does it matter when everyone just wants to survive?

A gothic horror about body autonomy couldn't have picked a more politically loaded time to debut. Following the Covid-19 Pandemic, Anti-vaxxers, and the Overturning of Roe v Wade, it's a subject that is on everybody's mind. Where do our bodies end and our Government's rights begin? What would you be willing to give, for your health?

The ending was left open, which I usually dislike, but something about the open ending just felt good. You can taste freedom on the back of your tongue just as equally as future's uncertainty. Not to mention, I'm frothing at the mouth for a sequel.