CALEO (LEECH #1) | James Crawford | @jamescrawford_7

I found this book through recommendations on Goodreads and decided to give it a read. This is story of Caleo Anima, a teenager with unknown and untapped power. As the story unfolds, a powerful superhuman group of beings – called Leeches – attack and decimate humanity. The Leeches live in a confused world of right, wrong, myth, legend, and truth. Unfortunately their confused world becomes the reader’s confused world too.

The world of the story has several groups who are themselves splintered. Think of it like X-Men – mutants split into the good guys and the bad guys, but Leeches takes it further and creates factions within each side. Each faction has leaders, each with his own set of ideas, philosophies, logic (or not), and legends – which becomes very difficult to follow, track, and associate correctly.

Throughout the text, the book seemed to lack professional proofing and/or editing. Typos, grammar, and occasionally a missing word made wrinkled eyebrows a few times. The author and his editors need to address the errors in the text and then push out an update. This won’t help the printed versions, but it would help overall. Take this one scene near the end (Kindle Location 4859/p247): We’ve learned that absorbing a Leech essence can heal you, so the following doesn’t make sense:

“We have a long day tomorrow, let’s get ready for bed,” Jack said, pulling Caleo towards the bathroom by his shirt. There they stripped silently and washed themselves with the washcloths that Jillian had left in the sink.

“What?” Caleo asked, seeing in the mirror that Jack had a surprised look on his face. Then he followed his eyes to where he was looking and quickly hid his manhood with the washcloth. 

“Caleo?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow. Then he whispered, “We’ve taken baths together since we were kids, and showers in gym class. I’ve seen you naked a thousand times.” Jack paused , as if not sure what to say next, then bluntly said, “You were circumcised a few weeks ago?” It was more of a question than a statement. Caleo took a deep breath; he knew eventually someone would notice. He tried to ask Nolan about in at the store but … When he didn’t respond Jack asked, “What happened?”

“At the lake when … it healed my body,” Caleo said sheepishly. “All my scars and cuts, it’s as if none of them ever happened.”

I have no idea what happened here. Was he circumcised, and then not, or was he uncircumcised, and then circumcised? Things like this make for confusing point in the story. I just to gloss over them and move on.

Something I loved – even though Caleo is gay, it’s just the way he is, period. It’s there, but not overdone. This is a really nice touch.

I gave the book four stars because I really think there’s incredible potential here. This storyline could also become a movie, easily, with some work. So if you can overlook its flaws, you’ll enjoy it very much. Check it out here on Amazon.