burnside

Hiron Ennes surreal and horrifying debut, Leech (Tordotcom) combines parasitic body horror with gothic family drama in a post-post-apocalyptic masterpiece — defying our understanding of identity, heredity, and bodily autonomy. In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed. In the frozen north, the Institute's body will…