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I recently read Leech by Hiron Ennes. It's a gothic Victorian-ish setting, but also secretly post-apocalyptic in that it is clearly set on a version of the Earth which has undergone some sort of mass devastation where the satellites fell from the sky. The main plot takes place in "Verdira". This is a cold, snowy mining town "as far north as north goes". The local dialect, spoken by the "Montish", vaguely reminds me of some old-timey texts I read in grade school English, but I can't place it.

  • "You right, médsaine? [...] Look a pet distrait."

  • "Ay winter nay proper here yet."

  • "Wae, looked like he was having a hard time."

I just sort of rolled with the assumption that this was somewhere in Northern Europe, but is there any actual indication of setting?

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This isn't a complete answer, as it doesn't analyse the accents or the description of the setting from the book itself, but it's at least relevant to know the author's take on the setting of the story and what inspired it. From an interview with Hiron Ennes:

EM: The premise of Leech is deeply chilling, and so is the setting! What inspired such a frozen landscape? And how did that fit into your wider world-building?

HE: For Leech, the setting came first. I grew up hiking in the Canadian Rockies, and I was always inspired by the immense, terrifying isolation of that landscape. Over the years I’ve tried to write many stories set in an alpine milieu, but I think Leech, as a post-post-postapocalyptic narrative, fits it best. Mountains are great reminders of our miniscule place in Earth’s explosive geological and biological history. Take Highwood Pass in Alberta, where at 7,200 feet above sea level one can find corals and fossilized shells millions of years old. Those frozen peaks were once the floor of a lively ocean, whose inhabitants we can only see through the imprints they left behind. These quiet reminders of Earth’s apocalyptic turbulence make me wonder what imprints human history will leave in its wake, and what unlikely mountains will house them.

So, at least, the setting was an important detail for the author, something that some thought went into - and the inspiration was the Canadian Rockies (which of course doesn't necessarily mean that's where Verdira actually is).

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  • This is useful (so +1) but I'll reserve acceptance for an answer that analyzes the book itself. Commented 23 hours ago
  • As expected; I would've done the same were I the OP :-) Commented 23 hours ago

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