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Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites
Not yet published
Expected 7 Jul 26Welcome to the hidden, squirming world of parasites—some of the most misunderstood creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies).
"Astonishing, eye-opening, and inspiring." —Chloe Dalton, author of Raising Hare
There is the tapeworm, which can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale; the tsetse fly, a notorious vector of disease that can pierce the skin even of crocodiles with its needle-like mouth; and the most universal symbol of parasitic the leech. Long villainized as, well, parasitic, these creatures are actually a vital part of every ecosystem—and Dr. Dino Martins, an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya, has made it his life’s mission to demystify these beguiling beings.
Hidden Creatures is a journey around the world ten times over—from Martins’ home in the wilds of East Africa, to the rainforests of the Amazon, to cities and backyards across the globe—and along the way, we encounter the brilliant and eccentric experts who join Martins on his adventures to investigate not only parasites but their hosts, from hyraxes and hippos to, of course, humans. Immersive, driven by an utterly infectious curiosity, and sure to transform every reader’s understanding of these organisms, Hidden Creatures has the magnetic force of a David Attenborough documentary and introduces a monumental, charismatic new voice in science writing.
"Astonishing, eye-opening, and inspiring." —Chloe Dalton, author of Raising Hare
There is the tapeworm, which can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale; the tsetse fly, a notorious vector of disease that can pierce the skin even of crocodiles with its needle-like mouth; and the most universal symbol of parasitic the leech. Long villainized as, well, parasitic, these creatures are actually a vital part of every ecosystem—and Dr. Dino Martins, an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya, has made it his life’s mission to demystify these beguiling beings.
Hidden Creatures is a journey around the world ten times over—from Martins’ home in the wilds of East Africa, to the rainforests of the Amazon, to cities and backyards across the globe—and along the way, we encounter the brilliant and eccentric experts who join Martins on his adventures to investigate not only parasites but their hosts, from hyraxes and hippos to, of course, humans. Immersive, driven by an utterly infectious curiosity, and sure to transform every reader’s understanding of these organisms, Hidden Creatures has the magnetic force of a David Attenborough documentary and introduces a monumental, charismatic new voice in science writing.
336 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication July 7, 2026
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Love at First Bite? Not Quite
“Hidden Creatures” does not make parasites beautiful, but it does make contempt feel premature.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | June 17th, 2026
“The Unfinished Sentence” – A child’s jarred caterpillar becomes the first lesson of “Hidden Creatures”: beauty, recoil, pale cocoons, and tiny wasps held in the same unfinished act of looking.
Dino J. Martins begins “Hidden Creatures” with an education in looking after recoil. As a boy in Western Kenya, he gathers caterpillars from a pepper tree and tends them with the seriousness children reserve for small lives adults have not yet taught them to dismiss. Most become pupae. One becomes a revelation. Its body ripples with larvae; pale cocoons erupt from its skin; tiny wasps emerge; then even tinier wasps appear among them, parasites of parasites. What might have remained a scene of childhood horror becomes the book’s first discipline: the world is not a smooth skin but a set of bodies inside bodies, appetites inside appetites, lives folded into other lives. The subject is parasites. The test is whether the reader can keep looking after the body has voted to flee.
Even a generous nature writer has to make a harder case when the guest list includes pinworms, hookworms, maggots, mosquitoes, lice, fleas, ticks, botflies, tapeworms, and leeches. Fungi, as in “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake, arrive with an underground glamour. Microbes, as in “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong, can be made intimate through their invisibility. Parasites, as in “Parasite Rex” by Carl Zimmer, have already had one formidable modern advocate. Martins is dealing with creatures the human imagination has long filed under trespass. His best trick is not making the reader stop saying “ew.” It is making “ew” feel like an unfinished sentence.
Martins arranges the book as an unclean parade, creature by creature, each chapter opening another jar, wound, bed seam, gut, or water trough. There is an introduction and twelve chapters, moving from worms and maggots to mosquitoes, bedbugs, botflies, tapeworms, leeches, and a closing chapter where parasite life opens into climate, travel, water, and warning. The taxonomy soon starts smelling of dung, rainwater, dog fur, and blood. Each chapter has its specimen, its life cycle, its evolutionary sleight of mouthpart. Then memory keeps breaking through the order: the pig, the horse, the dog, the child with the jar, the students peering harder than they expected to.
Early chapters show the habit in full crawl. A school pig named Miss Piggly-Pog leads to worms, dung, soil. Then come bare feet, anemia, sanitation, racialized medical fantasies, and the slow education that parasites travel through bodies, not through the categories bodies invent. A dead elephant in Tsavo becomes a lesson in maggots as heat, labor, competition, cleansing, and return. Martins cuts back the elephant’s skin and discovers not mere rot but industry. His prose does not prettify the horror. It gives the horror a job.
“Industry in the Carcass” – The dead elephant in Tsavo becomes neither spectacle nor horror image, but a broad field of heat, hide, flies, maggots, and hidden labor.
The prose is lush, but its best effects come from the sudden cut between beauty and bite. Martins writes in long, damp, color-rich sentences, then drops into short beats of delight, shock, or comedy. He sees lime-green grass, lemon-gold plains, pale worms, darkening pupae, mosquito larvae breathing at the surface of a puddle, leeches looping toward blood. His diction mixes scientific terminology, childhood awe, local speech, fleshly candor, and verbal overgrowth. He can move from “hyperparasitoids” to a classroom’s “monster caterpillar beast” without embarrassment, because the scientist and the child naturalist are not competing for authority. The child is not decoration; he is the first instrument.
Revulsion, in Martins’s hands, is not argued out of existence. It is given a sequence. First one flinches. Then one looks. Then one learns the route through soil, blood, bedding, water. A hookworm is sanitation, migration, skin, poverty, iron, labor, medicine, and the failure of map-thinking. In a mosquito, water and heat meet blood, Plasmodium, birds, viruses, urban adaptation, climate, and the old insult of being tiny and consequential. A flea is bedding, nests, plague, microscopy, childhood curiosity, and the shared vulnerability of domestic and wild animals.
In the strongest pages, parasites are returned to the traffic of the living without being acquitted. They steal, pierce, burrow, feed, manipulate, sicken, and kill. Yet Martins refuses the tidy human comfort of treating them as biological criminals, as if life were a landlord fantasy and the body had a clear deed. A gut is not sealed off from soil. A bed is not sealed off from travel. A dog is not sealed off from hyraxes, fleas, worms, or grief. The book’s mercy is not innocence. It is the refusal to let disgust do all the judging.
Perhaps the most moving instance comes in the tapeworm chapter, which begins not with human medical anxiety but with Mr Barabara, Martins’s Jack Russell terrier and companion in Laikipia. The chapter is tender, funny, and, eventually, quietly bruising. Barabara kills a hyrax; Martins and students examine the body; its skin and organs contain fleas, ticks, mites, worms, and an astonishing tapeworm. Later Barabara himself hosts a tapeworm, then ages, becomes ill, and dies. When Martins buries him, the parasite too emerges dying. A lesser book would have used this as a grotesque punchline. Martins turns it into a funeral with an uninvited mourner.
A similar risk governs “Parable of the Leech,” the book’s strangest formal gamble. A young shepherd named Emmanuel discovers a leech feeding at his ankle and condemns her as a thief. The leech speaks, explaining her hunger, her young, her smallness, her place among created things. The scene is perilously close to sermon; the pulpit is damp, and the preacher has excellent suction. Yet the chapter matters because it makes explicit what the rest of the book has been doing more quietly. Martins is not asking us to sentimentalize parasites. He is asking whether the imagination can widen without becoming foolish. The leech’s defense grants speech to a creature whose whole relation to us seems to be mouth.
Practical intelligence in “Hidden Creatures” does not arrive as touristic garnish; it arrives with dust on its sandals. During drought in Laikipia, Mandagoi shows how to strain leechy water through a shuka so cattle can drink without swallowing the wrong passengers. In the flea chapter, a boy named Musa and a litter of puppies become a lesson in bedding, eggs, larvae, and shared disease. In the tick chapter, students peer at ornate ticks on hippos with the seriousness usually reserved for jewels. Teaching, for Martins, is not the distribution of information from expert to novice. It is the spread of a useful itch.
“Straining the Wrong Passengers” – Mandagoi’s shuka turns leechy water into a lesson in practical intelligence: cloth, cattle, drought, and danger handled by a knowing hand.
Against that achievement, the method has a cost. The chapters often follow the same path: lush scene, bite or burrow, life-cycle explanation, a history of water, toilets, medicine, or neglect, ecological broadening, ethical turn. The pattern trains the reader by repetition, but it also becomes easy to anticipate. By the middle of the book, one begins to know that the parasite currently making the skin crawl will soon be welcomed into a larger account of shared appetite. That account usually persuades; the pardon sometimes arrives before the itch has finished making its case.
Despite the repetition, Martins’s abundance remains difficult to resist. The problem is not that he lacks material; it is that he has almost too much of it, and too much fondness for every wriggling guest. His sentences can grow greenhouse-humid. Wonder does real work here. It can dissolve disgust. It can also soften anger, grief, and analysis into one glowing wash. Not every worm needs a garland. Not every bite needs to become a benediction. A few plainer, sterner pages would have given the lovelier ones more voltage.
Information in “Hidden Creatures” rarely descends from a clean laboratory shelf. It comes from Kenya, from classrooms and field courses, from animals Martins has cared for, from students he has taught, from dogs he has loved, from guides and herders and veterinarians, from places where parasites are not metaphors but daily terms of life. The reader does not merely receive the life cycle; one often receives the mud, smell, heat, embarrassment, animal breath, and human improvisation around it.
Mosquitoes, for instance, are never just mosquitoes here. They are larvae in puddles, bites in forests, malaria parasites moving through liver and blood, viruses in birds, and warnings about how quickly the world changes when water, heat, travel, and neglect rearrange themselves. Climate, vectors, livestock, sanitation, and frayed public trust enter through the bite marks. Martins does not need to drag relevance in by the antennae. The mosquito does it for him.
Illuminating comparisons help, though they do not quite house the book. “Parasite Rex” by Carl Zimmer remains the nearest shelf-neighbor in subject, though Martins is warmer, more autobiographical, more willing to risk tenderness. “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake is useful for hidden-world wonder, though fungi do not have to overcome quite the same public-relations problem as botflies. “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong shares the lesson that a body is never singular, but Martins works with beings whose presence feels less like companionship than uninvited tenancy. The neighbors clarify the oddness without domesticating it. Field memoir, biological cabinet, public-health history, animal elegy, classroom comedy, defense brief for the bloodsucking: Martins keeps all of it moving, even when the jar fogs.
The structure does more than shelve specimens; it makes repetition a form of training. Creature by creature, the reader moves from flinch to looking, from looking to explanation, from explanation to a less flattering place among hosts, guests, and meals. Yet the structure also reveals the book’s habit of resolving difficulty into the same ethical shape. By the final third, one may occasionally wish a parasite would remain simply appalling for a page or two longer, allowed to keep its small black hat and villain music before being escorted into the choir.
Rating “Hidden Creatures” at 85/100, which corresponds to 4/5 stars, feels right because its excellence is unmistakable but needs pruning. This is vivid, generous popular natural history, memorable partly because it is not perfectly pruned. Its voice has weather, mud, dogs, classrooms, insect boxes, blood, dung, grief, and laughter in it. It is not reporting from nature’s edge. It is speaking from inside the swarm.
One should not confuse the book’s warmth with softness. Martins can be playful, but he knows that parasites make bodies pay. Hookworms drain iron. Flukes damage livers. Mosquitoes carry death from one body to another with almost insulting elegance. Fleas live in bedding and history. Bedbugs turn sleep into evidence. The book’s mercy toward parasites is therefore not innocence. It is a more demanding kind of judgment, one that insists harm and belonging can occupy the same creature.
Part of the book’s charm is also its dividing line. Readers who want lean exposition may find the prose too leafy, the self too present, the mercy too expansive. Readers who prefer nature writing safely attached to animals with fur, feathers, tusks, or large wet eyes may find the guest list inconsiderate. But those willing to sit still in the discomfort will find a book that changes the order of noticing. It does not ask for love at first bite. It asks for the second look.
Of course, the second look is not always comfortable. The JFK hotel bedbug episode works because it collapses the distance between field adventure and human vanity. The parasite is no longer in savannah grass, rainforest leaf litter, livestock dung, or a crocodile-haunted river. It is in the bed, in the seam, in travel’s little theater of clean sheets and false privacy. Martins pulls back the cover, and the unseen world has checked in before him. It has not paid extra for late checkout.
“False Privacy” – A hotel bed seam interrupts the theater of clean sheets, bringing the parasite out of the field and into the intimate architecture of human comfort.
Underneath its parasite tour, “Hidden Creatures” is about the fantasy of clean borders. Host and guest, harm and usefulness, skin and ground, science and story, revulsion and reverence: Martins does not erase these distinctions, but he makes them porous. The final chapter returns to a gorge, a dog, insects, birds, water, a praying mantis driven into the stream by hidden horsehair worms, and a rhino whose wound becomes a small theater of filarial worms, flies, and a drongo. Nearby, mistletoe draws from trees. It is not allegory imposed on nature. It is appetite, injury, and dependence caught in the same frame.
“Wound, Fly, Drongo” – A rhino’s wound, the flies that gather, the drongo nearby, and the faint branch-life around them close the sequence on appetite, injury, and dependence in one frame.
Long after the life cycles blur, what remains are not lessons but afterimages: the child with the jarred caterpillar; the elephant carcass alive with maggots; the mattress seam with its dreadful congregation of bedbugs; the students admiring ticks as if the hippo had been keeping jewels in unlikely places; Mr Barabara and the tapeworm; the leech pleading its case; the rhino standing in half-light, host to wounds and hungers not entirely its own. Martins’s gift is to make these scenes feel comic, troubling, and strangely tender without sanding off their teeth.
One leaves “Hidden Creatures” not converted into a lover of parasites, exactly. That would be too tidy, and perhaps a little suspicious. The leech remains a leech. The tick remains a tick. The botfly has not become a lifestyle brand, thank mercy. But one does leave with the reflex slightly delayed. Disgust still arrives. It no longer gets the last word merely because it arrived first.
Still, the book finally presses through sight more than thesis. A creature in light, another in shadow; a wound becoming a meal; a meal becoming flight; a tree feeding what feeds from it; the visible world threaded by small hidden hungers. Martins’s victory is not that he makes the parasite beautiful. It is that he makes contempt feel premature. In that pause – itchy, comic, unsettled, alive – the unseen world gets one more chance to appear.
Faint Pencil Underdrawing – The first graphite scaffold maps the jar ellipse, caterpillar body, child’s fingers, cocoon clusters, and plate border before the image learns its atmosphere.
Caterpillar / Wasp Anatomical Study – A closer study of segments, cocoons, and emerging wasps turns the painting’s smallest biological event into its true center of gravity.
Hand and Jar Glass Study – This study works out touch, transparency, and scale, keeping the scene intimate without turning the child into the subject.
Color Swatch Sheet – Cover-derived ochres, taupes, umbers, parchment creams, khakis, clay browns, and black-brown accents establish the restrained natural-history palette for the whole image.
Watercolor Border Study – Hand-ruled graphite and partial wash test a border that feels like field notebook, specimen plate, and fragile container all at once.
Pencil-Plus-First-Wash Stage – The first wash lets light enter the jar and paper, with the image still suspended between drawing, discovery, and the beginning of color.
Proposed Alternative Book Cover Study – A speculative cover-like arrangement tests how “The Unfinished Sentence” might operate as an editorial object: title, specimen, border, and signature in one quiet field.
Dino Martins Covered in Hidden Creatures – A playful literary portrait of Dino Martins as living field plate, covered from hat to boots in leeches, bedbugs, wasps, worms, caterpillars, cocoons, and other small lives from “Hidden Creatures.”
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
“Hidden Creatures” does not make parasites beautiful, but it does make contempt feel premature.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | June 17th, 2026
“The Unfinished Sentence” – A child’s jarred caterpillar becomes the first lesson of “Hidden Creatures”: beauty, recoil, pale cocoons, and tiny wasps held in the same unfinished act of looking.
Dino J. Martins begins “Hidden Creatures” with an education in looking after recoil. As a boy in Western Kenya, he gathers caterpillars from a pepper tree and tends them with the seriousness children reserve for small lives adults have not yet taught them to dismiss. Most become pupae. One becomes a revelation. Its body ripples with larvae; pale cocoons erupt from its skin; tiny wasps emerge; then even tinier wasps appear among them, parasites of parasites. What might have remained a scene of childhood horror becomes the book’s first discipline: the world is not a smooth skin but a set of bodies inside bodies, appetites inside appetites, lives folded into other lives. The subject is parasites. The test is whether the reader can keep looking after the body has voted to flee.
Even a generous nature writer has to make a harder case when the guest list includes pinworms, hookworms, maggots, mosquitoes, lice, fleas, ticks, botflies, tapeworms, and leeches. Fungi, as in “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake, arrive with an underground glamour. Microbes, as in “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong, can be made intimate through their invisibility. Parasites, as in “Parasite Rex” by Carl Zimmer, have already had one formidable modern advocate. Martins is dealing with creatures the human imagination has long filed under trespass. His best trick is not making the reader stop saying “ew.” It is making “ew” feel like an unfinished sentence.
Martins arranges the book as an unclean parade, creature by creature, each chapter opening another jar, wound, bed seam, gut, or water trough. There is an introduction and twelve chapters, moving from worms and maggots to mosquitoes, bedbugs, botflies, tapeworms, leeches, and a closing chapter where parasite life opens into climate, travel, water, and warning. The taxonomy soon starts smelling of dung, rainwater, dog fur, and blood. Each chapter has its specimen, its life cycle, its evolutionary sleight of mouthpart. Then memory keeps breaking through the order: the pig, the horse, the dog, the child with the jar, the students peering harder than they expected to.
Early chapters show the habit in full crawl. A school pig named Miss Piggly-Pog leads to worms, dung, soil. Then come bare feet, anemia, sanitation, racialized medical fantasies, and the slow education that parasites travel through bodies, not through the categories bodies invent. A dead elephant in Tsavo becomes a lesson in maggots as heat, labor, competition, cleansing, and return. Martins cuts back the elephant’s skin and discovers not mere rot but industry. His prose does not prettify the horror. It gives the horror a job.
“Industry in the Carcass” – The dead elephant in Tsavo becomes neither spectacle nor horror image, but a broad field of heat, hide, flies, maggots, and hidden labor.
The prose is lush, but its best effects come from the sudden cut between beauty and bite. Martins writes in long, damp, color-rich sentences, then drops into short beats of delight, shock, or comedy. He sees lime-green grass, lemon-gold plains, pale worms, darkening pupae, mosquito larvae breathing at the surface of a puddle, leeches looping toward blood. His diction mixes scientific terminology, childhood awe, local speech, fleshly candor, and verbal overgrowth. He can move from “hyperparasitoids” to a classroom’s “monster caterpillar beast” without embarrassment, because the scientist and the child naturalist are not competing for authority. The child is not decoration; he is the first instrument.
Revulsion, in Martins’s hands, is not argued out of existence. It is given a sequence. First one flinches. Then one looks. Then one learns the route through soil, blood, bedding, water. A hookworm is sanitation, migration, skin, poverty, iron, labor, medicine, and the failure of map-thinking. In a mosquito, water and heat meet blood, Plasmodium, birds, viruses, urban adaptation, climate, and the old insult of being tiny and consequential. A flea is bedding, nests, plague, microscopy, childhood curiosity, and the shared vulnerability of domestic and wild animals.
In the strongest pages, parasites are returned to the traffic of the living without being acquitted. They steal, pierce, burrow, feed, manipulate, sicken, and kill. Yet Martins refuses the tidy human comfort of treating them as biological criminals, as if life were a landlord fantasy and the body had a clear deed. A gut is not sealed off from soil. A bed is not sealed off from travel. A dog is not sealed off from hyraxes, fleas, worms, or grief. The book’s mercy is not innocence. It is the refusal to let disgust do all the judging.
Perhaps the most moving instance comes in the tapeworm chapter, which begins not with human medical anxiety but with Mr Barabara, Martins’s Jack Russell terrier and companion in Laikipia. The chapter is tender, funny, and, eventually, quietly bruising. Barabara kills a hyrax; Martins and students examine the body; its skin and organs contain fleas, ticks, mites, worms, and an astonishing tapeworm. Later Barabara himself hosts a tapeworm, then ages, becomes ill, and dies. When Martins buries him, the parasite too emerges dying. A lesser book would have used this as a grotesque punchline. Martins turns it into a funeral with an uninvited mourner.
A similar risk governs “Parable of the Leech,” the book’s strangest formal gamble. A young shepherd named Emmanuel discovers a leech feeding at his ankle and condemns her as a thief. The leech speaks, explaining her hunger, her young, her smallness, her place among created things. The scene is perilously close to sermon; the pulpit is damp, and the preacher has excellent suction. Yet the chapter matters because it makes explicit what the rest of the book has been doing more quietly. Martins is not asking us to sentimentalize parasites. He is asking whether the imagination can widen without becoming foolish. The leech’s defense grants speech to a creature whose whole relation to us seems to be mouth.
Practical intelligence in “Hidden Creatures” does not arrive as touristic garnish; it arrives with dust on its sandals. During drought in Laikipia, Mandagoi shows how to strain leechy water through a shuka so cattle can drink without swallowing the wrong passengers. In the flea chapter, a boy named Musa and a litter of puppies become a lesson in bedding, eggs, larvae, and shared disease. In the tick chapter, students peer at ornate ticks on hippos with the seriousness usually reserved for jewels. Teaching, for Martins, is not the distribution of information from expert to novice. It is the spread of a useful itch.
“Straining the Wrong Passengers” – Mandagoi’s shuka turns leechy water into a lesson in practical intelligence: cloth, cattle, drought, and danger handled by a knowing hand.
Against that achievement, the method has a cost. The chapters often follow the same path: lush scene, bite or burrow, life-cycle explanation, a history of water, toilets, medicine, or neglect, ecological broadening, ethical turn. The pattern trains the reader by repetition, but it also becomes easy to anticipate. By the middle of the book, one begins to know that the parasite currently making the skin crawl will soon be welcomed into a larger account of shared appetite. That account usually persuades; the pardon sometimes arrives before the itch has finished making its case.
Despite the repetition, Martins’s abundance remains difficult to resist. The problem is not that he lacks material; it is that he has almost too much of it, and too much fondness for every wriggling guest. His sentences can grow greenhouse-humid. Wonder does real work here. It can dissolve disgust. It can also soften anger, grief, and analysis into one glowing wash. Not every worm needs a garland. Not every bite needs to become a benediction. A few plainer, sterner pages would have given the lovelier ones more voltage.
Information in “Hidden Creatures” rarely descends from a clean laboratory shelf. It comes from Kenya, from classrooms and field courses, from animals Martins has cared for, from students he has taught, from dogs he has loved, from guides and herders and veterinarians, from places where parasites are not metaphors but daily terms of life. The reader does not merely receive the life cycle; one often receives the mud, smell, heat, embarrassment, animal breath, and human improvisation around it.
Mosquitoes, for instance, are never just mosquitoes here. They are larvae in puddles, bites in forests, malaria parasites moving through liver and blood, viruses in birds, and warnings about how quickly the world changes when water, heat, travel, and neglect rearrange themselves. Climate, vectors, livestock, sanitation, and frayed public trust enter through the bite marks. Martins does not need to drag relevance in by the antennae. The mosquito does it for him.
Illuminating comparisons help, though they do not quite house the book. “Parasite Rex” by Carl Zimmer remains the nearest shelf-neighbor in subject, though Martins is warmer, more autobiographical, more willing to risk tenderness. “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake is useful for hidden-world wonder, though fungi do not have to overcome quite the same public-relations problem as botflies. “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong shares the lesson that a body is never singular, but Martins works with beings whose presence feels less like companionship than uninvited tenancy. The neighbors clarify the oddness without domesticating it. Field memoir, biological cabinet, public-health history, animal elegy, classroom comedy, defense brief for the bloodsucking: Martins keeps all of it moving, even when the jar fogs.
The structure does more than shelve specimens; it makes repetition a form of training. Creature by creature, the reader moves from flinch to looking, from looking to explanation, from explanation to a less flattering place among hosts, guests, and meals. Yet the structure also reveals the book’s habit of resolving difficulty into the same ethical shape. By the final third, one may occasionally wish a parasite would remain simply appalling for a page or two longer, allowed to keep its small black hat and villain music before being escorted into the choir.
Rating “Hidden Creatures” at 85/100, which corresponds to 4/5 stars, feels right because its excellence is unmistakable but needs pruning. This is vivid, generous popular natural history, memorable partly because it is not perfectly pruned. Its voice has weather, mud, dogs, classrooms, insect boxes, blood, dung, grief, and laughter in it. It is not reporting from nature’s edge. It is speaking from inside the swarm.
One should not confuse the book’s warmth with softness. Martins can be playful, but he knows that parasites make bodies pay. Hookworms drain iron. Flukes damage livers. Mosquitoes carry death from one body to another with almost insulting elegance. Fleas live in bedding and history. Bedbugs turn sleep into evidence. The book’s mercy toward parasites is therefore not innocence. It is a more demanding kind of judgment, one that insists harm and belonging can occupy the same creature.
Part of the book’s charm is also its dividing line. Readers who want lean exposition may find the prose too leafy, the self too present, the mercy too expansive. Readers who prefer nature writing safely attached to animals with fur, feathers, tusks, or large wet eyes may find the guest list inconsiderate. But those willing to sit still in the discomfort will find a book that changes the order of noticing. It does not ask for love at first bite. It asks for the second look.
Of course, the second look is not always comfortable. The JFK hotel bedbug episode works because it collapses the distance between field adventure and human vanity. The parasite is no longer in savannah grass, rainforest leaf litter, livestock dung, or a crocodile-haunted river. It is in the bed, in the seam, in travel’s little theater of clean sheets and false privacy. Martins pulls back the cover, and the unseen world has checked in before him. It has not paid extra for late checkout.
“False Privacy” – A hotel bed seam interrupts the theater of clean sheets, bringing the parasite out of the field and into the intimate architecture of human comfort.
Underneath its parasite tour, “Hidden Creatures” is about the fantasy of clean borders. Host and guest, harm and usefulness, skin and ground, science and story, revulsion and reverence: Martins does not erase these distinctions, but he makes them porous. The final chapter returns to a gorge, a dog, insects, birds, water, a praying mantis driven into the stream by hidden horsehair worms, and a rhino whose wound becomes a small theater of filarial worms, flies, and a drongo. Nearby, mistletoe draws from trees. It is not allegory imposed on nature. It is appetite, injury, and dependence caught in the same frame.
“Wound, Fly, Drongo” – A rhino’s wound, the flies that gather, the drongo nearby, and the faint branch-life around them close the sequence on appetite, injury, and dependence in one frame.
Long after the life cycles blur, what remains are not lessons but afterimages: the child with the jarred caterpillar; the elephant carcass alive with maggots; the mattress seam with its dreadful congregation of bedbugs; the students admiring ticks as if the hippo had been keeping jewels in unlikely places; Mr Barabara and the tapeworm; the leech pleading its case; the rhino standing in half-light, host to wounds and hungers not entirely its own. Martins’s gift is to make these scenes feel comic, troubling, and strangely tender without sanding off their teeth.
One leaves “Hidden Creatures” not converted into a lover of parasites, exactly. That would be too tidy, and perhaps a little suspicious. The leech remains a leech. The tick remains a tick. The botfly has not become a lifestyle brand, thank mercy. But one does leave with the reflex slightly delayed. Disgust still arrives. It no longer gets the last word merely because it arrived first.
Still, the book finally presses through sight more than thesis. A creature in light, another in shadow; a wound becoming a meal; a meal becoming flight; a tree feeding what feeds from it; the visible world threaded by small hidden hungers. Martins’s victory is not that he makes the parasite beautiful. It is that he makes contempt feel premature. In that pause – itchy, comic, unsettled, alive – the unseen world gets one more chance to appear.
Faint Pencil Underdrawing – The first graphite scaffold maps the jar ellipse, caterpillar body, child’s fingers, cocoon clusters, and plate border before the image learns its atmosphere.
Caterpillar / Wasp Anatomical Study – A closer study of segments, cocoons, and emerging wasps turns the painting’s smallest biological event into its true center of gravity.
Hand and Jar Glass Study – This study works out touch, transparency, and scale, keeping the scene intimate without turning the child into the subject.
Color Swatch Sheet – Cover-derived ochres, taupes, umbers, parchment creams, khakis, clay browns, and black-brown accents establish the restrained natural-history palette for the whole image.
Watercolor Border Study – Hand-ruled graphite and partial wash test a border that feels like field notebook, specimen plate, and fragile container all at once.
Pencil-Plus-First-Wash Stage – The first wash lets light enter the jar and paper, with the image still suspended between drawing, discovery, and the beginning of color.
Proposed Alternative Book Cover Study – A speculative cover-like arrangement tests how “The Unfinished Sentence” might operate as an editorial object: title, specimen, border, and signature in one quiet field.
Dino Martins Covered in Hidden Creatures – A playful literary portrait of Dino Martins as living field plate, covered from hat to boots in leeches, bedbugs, wasps, worms, caterpillars, cocoons, and other small lives from “Hidden Creatures.”
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Hidden Creatures by Dino Martins is a very highly recommended intriguing and accessible look into the world of parasites. Dr. Martins, an award-winning entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and professor from Kenya, examines real parasites (not that relative who always wants more) in an enthusiastic, understandable, educational, and informative manner. The complete title of the book, Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites, makes this quite clear.
Although I felt squeamish and perhaps a bit nauseous at times, I was totally engrossed throughout this informative book. Dr. Martins is a descriptive writer as well as a great teacher who takes delight in sharing his knowledge. Using a conversational tone and in poetic language he shares a plethora of fascinating, detailed information about a wide variety of parasites, their life cycles, treatments for them, as well as the interconnectedness of everything. This isn't simply a book about parasites, it's a detailed, factual book about Dr. Martins' educated, factual, and real life examinations of parasites. This makes all the difference. While reading you are experiencing remotely and at a safe distance his up close observations and interactions.
Chapters are delightfully (and the subject is a joy for Martins to discuss) are titled: 1. Practical Pinworms, Happy Hookworms and Remarkable Roundworms; 2. Marvelous Maggots; 3. Lovable Liver Flukes and Bountiful Bloodworms; 4. Magnificent Mosquitoes and Perfect Plasmodia; 5. Beautiful Bedbugs and Likable Lice; 6. Fabulous Fleas; 7. Mysterious Mites and Titillating Ticks; 8. Bashful Botflies; 9. Terrific Tapeworms; 10. Luscious Leeches; 11. Parable of the Leech; 12. Parasites Rising (And Falling); Acknowledgements and Notes. There are illustrations of various parasites included.
He said more than once while discussing parasites "Life begets death begets life," which is a poignant observation that is clearly exemplified through his elegant, immersive discussions of the various parasites that are a vital part of every ecosystem. A story of one of his experiences observing the activity surrounding an elephants corpse while collecting samples demonstrates this fact. Dr. Martins' book clearly shows the importance of really seeing and paying attention to what is going on around you every day. Also included in the text is a wealth of historical background.
The last chapter was quite interesting and begs for further studies. He discussed how the immune system of humans may be trained through the exposure to parasites and how the increase of allergies may be connected to the decrease of exposure in developed industrial areas. Allergies are rare in rural tropical areas where exposure to parasites is common. Also touched upon was the fact that there are very few new pathogens or parasites. Reports that are quick to claim something is a new foreign agent (ticks, mosquitoes) is a fallacy.
Hidden Creatures is an excellent choice for anyone interested in an accessible account of the world of parasites. I was admittedly simultaneously, fascinated, curious, disgusted, and engaged throughout the entire book. Thanks to Knopf Doubleday for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2026/0...
Although I felt squeamish and perhaps a bit nauseous at times, I was totally engrossed throughout this informative book. Dr. Martins is a descriptive writer as well as a great teacher who takes delight in sharing his knowledge. Using a conversational tone and in poetic language he shares a plethora of fascinating, detailed information about a wide variety of parasites, their life cycles, treatments for them, as well as the interconnectedness of everything. This isn't simply a book about parasites, it's a detailed, factual book about Dr. Martins' educated, factual, and real life examinations of parasites. This makes all the difference. While reading you are experiencing remotely and at a safe distance his up close observations and interactions.
Chapters are delightfully (and the subject is a joy for Martins to discuss) are titled: 1. Practical Pinworms, Happy Hookworms and Remarkable Roundworms; 2. Marvelous Maggots; 3. Lovable Liver Flukes and Bountiful Bloodworms; 4. Magnificent Mosquitoes and Perfect Plasmodia; 5. Beautiful Bedbugs and Likable Lice; 6. Fabulous Fleas; 7. Mysterious Mites and Titillating Ticks; 8. Bashful Botflies; 9. Terrific Tapeworms; 10. Luscious Leeches; 11. Parable of the Leech; 12. Parasites Rising (And Falling); Acknowledgements and Notes. There are illustrations of various parasites included.
He said more than once while discussing parasites "Life begets death begets life," which is a poignant observation that is clearly exemplified through his elegant, immersive discussions of the various parasites that are a vital part of every ecosystem. A story of one of his experiences observing the activity surrounding an elephants corpse while collecting samples demonstrates this fact. Dr. Martins' book clearly shows the importance of really seeing and paying attention to what is going on around you every day. Also included in the text is a wealth of historical background.
The last chapter was quite interesting and begs for further studies. He discussed how the immune system of humans may be trained through the exposure to parasites and how the increase of allergies may be connected to the decrease of exposure in developed industrial areas. Allergies are rare in rural tropical areas where exposure to parasites is common. Also touched upon was the fact that there are very few new pathogens or parasites. Reports that are quick to claim something is a new foreign agent (ticks, mosquitoes) is a fallacy.
Hidden Creatures is an excellent choice for anyone interested in an accessible account of the world of parasites. I was admittedly simultaneously, fascinated, curious, disgusted, and engaged throughout the entire book. Thanks to Knopf Doubleday for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2026/0...
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"Life begets death and begets life"
" The health and well being of all species and all systems are linked with the wider ecosystem and are tied to an evolutionary past that ignore at our peril"
The eternal cycle of life from birth to death to decay that feeds new life ...
You often read a review that says a book was memorable or life-changing but Dino Martins' Hidden Creatures' really will make you change the way in which you observe the world around you and beyond.
Dr Dino Martins , a world renowned botanist and entomologist ,wants to demystify and educate us all about a hidden world- a world on or beneath the skin of all creatures including us - a community of thousands of different species ... enter the world of wriggling, burrowing, and ever hungry parasites.
What makes this book is Dino Martins' enthusiasm and human approach to informing the reader about this 'secret society '; yes, there is an element of academic knowledge and understanding but this is within a text that speaks directly to us. Exploring the world of parasites with students and incorporating their questions and fascination adds a brilliant dynamic.
Dino Martins extensive research and passion is superb- recounting visits to different countries but primarily within the Turkana Basin in Kenya. Each chapter focuses on the 'delights' of a particular type of parasite;( the alliteration for titles raise a smile) Terrific Tapeworms; Mysterious Mites ; Fabulous Fleas; Likeable Lice...etc).
At the end of each section, I had to share facts with family and friends : the bodily structure of the mosquito with its drilling 'equipment"; the hooking onto internal organs and 'frolicking' in our intestines; the 140 metre long tapeworm; zombie ants.. the eyelid as a home and entry point for some parasites..The sensory abilities of these minuscule/microscopic creatures is incredible to say the least
But this is a book also with serious message too; the impact upon different animal and insect species and humans when a parasite enters their body or onto their skin/fur can be devastating;( potentially leading to extinction) the increased movement of parasites within a global economy and travel and future considerations; the importance of scientific research study to deal with the harm from certain creatures.
As Dino Martins states "perhaps our most powerful tool against parasites is our insatiable curiosity ." as the story of parasites continues...often unnoticed but certainly just beneath the skin. By the end of the book, my awareness of parasites had grown enormously but also a fascinating respect of these hidden neighbours.
Hugely readable and memorable.
Thank you to William Collins Publishers and Netgalley for an advance copy and an honest review.
" The health and well being of all species and all systems are linked with the wider ecosystem and are tied to an evolutionary past that ignore at our peril"
The eternal cycle of life from birth to death to decay that feeds new life ...
You often read a review that says a book was memorable or life-changing but Dino Martins' Hidden Creatures' really will make you change the way in which you observe the world around you and beyond.
Dr Dino Martins , a world renowned botanist and entomologist ,wants to demystify and educate us all about a hidden world- a world on or beneath the skin of all creatures including us - a community of thousands of different species ... enter the world of wriggling, burrowing, and ever hungry parasites.
What makes this book is Dino Martins' enthusiasm and human approach to informing the reader about this 'secret society '; yes, there is an element of academic knowledge and understanding but this is within a text that speaks directly to us. Exploring the world of parasites with students and incorporating their questions and fascination adds a brilliant dynamic.
Dino Martins extensive research and passion is superb- recounting visits to different countries but primarily within the Turkana Basin in Kenya. Each chapter focuses on the 'delights' of a particular type of parasite;( the alliteration for titles raise a smile) Terrific Tapeworms; Mysterious Mites ; Fabulous Fleas; Likeable Lice...etc).
At the end of each section, I had to share facts with family and friends : the bodily structure of the mosquito with its drilling 'equipment"; the hooking onto internal organs and 'frolicking' in our intestines; the 140 metre long tapeworm; zombie ants.. the eyelid as a home and entry point for some parasites..The sensory abilities of these minuscule/microscopic creatures is incredible to say the least
But this is a book also with serious message too; the impact upon different animal and insect species and humans when a parasite enters their body or onto their skin/fur can be devastating;( potentially leading to extinction) the increased movement of parasites within a global economy and travel and future considerations; the importance of scientific research study to deal with the harm from certain creatures.
As Dino Martins states "perhaps our most powerful tool against parasites is our insatiable curiosity ." as the story of parasites continues...often unnoticed but certainly just beneath the skin. By the end of the book, my awareness of parasites had grown enormously but also a fascinating respect of these hidden neighbours.
Hugely readable and memorable.
Thank you to William Collins Publishers and Netgalley for an advance copy and an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I'm not sure if it's possible for book centered around the world of parasites to be both intellectually satisfying and surprisingly poetic in presentation, but those are the two experiences I kept having with "Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous History-Shaping World of Parasites," a literary adventure put forth by lifelong parasite devotee and wonderdude Dr. Dino J. Martins.
Martins doesn't compromise on the facts here, immersing us in more than we could ever want to know about this world in which he's spent his entire life. However, there's also a remarkably adorable passion that unfolds here that will have you rethinking these misunderstood creatures and very likely wishing you'd stumble across this enthusiastic scientific hero and his ability to both demystify these creatures in a way that's both accessible and endearing.
In addition to leeches, botflies, and parasites (oh my), Dr. Martins introduces us to the tapeworm, a remarkable being that can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale. We learn bunches about the tsetse fly and a whole lot more.
I can't say that "Hidden Creatures" will make you fall in love with parasites, but it sure will give you a deeper appreciation for how these creatures are a vital part of every ecosystem and, in some cases, their nasty reputation is quite undeserved.
Dr. Martins is an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya. He's devoted his life to demystifying these fascinating beings he presents here. By the end, you'll be thankful he does.
I will confess that I occasionally struggled with the tonal rhythms of "Hidden Creatures," Dr. Martins occasionally waxing a little too eloquently. However, it's his enthusiasm that's so infectious and that's what really shines through here while we're being both informed and engaged with his world.
And what an amazing world it is. Dr. Martins takes us around the world with his hosts and collaborators. We learn about places most of us have never been. We learn about animals and parasites most of us have spent a lifetime trying to avoid. I'm not running off to the Amazon anytime soon, but I certainly have enjoyed reading about the adventures of someone who has done so.
With delightful insights and an almost childlike curiosity, Dr. Martins has crafted one of the year's most unique reading adventures. For those who enter this world, Dr. Martins has crafted a literary adventure for those willing to open themselves to an entirely new aspect of history and the world we live in.
Martins doesn't compromise on the facts here, immersing us in more than we could ever want to know about this world in which he's spent his entire life. However, there's also a remarkably adorable passion that unfolds here that will have you rethinking these misunderstood creatures and very likely wishing you'd stumble across this enthusiastic scientific hero and his ability to both demystify these creatures in a way that's both accessible and endearing.
In addition to leeches, botflies, and parasites (oh my), Dr. Martins introduces us to the tapeworm, a remarkable being that can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale. We learn bunches about the tsetse fly and a whole lot more.
I can't say that "Hidden Creatures" will make you fall in love with parasites, but it sure will give you a deeper appreciation for how these creatures are a vital part of every ecosystem and, in some cases, their nasty reputation is quite undeserved.
Dr. Martins is an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya. He's devoted his life to demystifying these fascinating beings he presents here. By the end, you'll be thankful he does.
I will confess that I occasionally struggled with the tonal rhythms of "Hidden Creatures," Dr. Martins occasionally waxing a little too eloquently. However, it's his enthusiasm that's so infectious and that's what really shines through here while we're being both informed and engaged with his world.
And what an amazing world it is. Dr. Martins takes us around the world with his hosts and collaborators. We learn about places most of us have never been. We learn about animals and parasites most of us have spent a lifetime trying to avoid. I'm not running off to the Amazon anytime soon, but I certainly have enjoyed reading about the adventures of someone who has done so.
With delightful insights and an almost childlike curiosity, Dr. Martins has crafted one of the year's most unique reading adventures. For those who enter this world, Dr. Martins has crafted a literary adventure for those willing to open themselves to an entirely new aspect of history and the world we live in.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
At once beautiful and gruesome, this book shines a spotlight on the misunderstood world of parasites. The author’s love of nature is manifest, depicting a leech in the same loving way as a puppy. Dr. Dino’s descriptive prose brings everything vividly to life, which is an asset when speaking about the sunset in the African savanna, but not so great when discussing parasitic infestations. I found the ghastliest parts fascinating; but didn’t love all the animal death. The author says more than once how life begets death begets life, but that part is sad. Being a book about scientists, there is also a bit of animal experimentation, so reader beware. With regards to the content, it’s illuminating how these little creatures have influenced the world so much. The writing is approachable, never too technical, and Dr. Dino tries to make lessons fun. That said, it seemed a little long to me: besides the content, the author adds where he was and with whom and what everyone said (including the original dialogue in the native language and the translation into English). I can see how he was trying to make the book more relatable, but eventually it got a little tiresome. Still, I enjoyed the read.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I really enjoyed this book as a foray into the world of parasites. There's a lot of joy and wonder for the natural world captured in the writing style here. The book focuses a lot on Africa, especially Kenya where the writer is based, where parasite-caused diseases are common and devastating. I really liked the perspective that this book offers, and really enjoyed learning about the work of naturalists there. I would note that the style of this book is more akin to nature writing than popular science writing, but the writer's background does mean that all the science present is rigorous. Some bits of the book that I really enjoyed was the history of parasites, how they were discovered, the researchers behind it and also the cultural impact. But the most touching parts were the ones that were deeply human (is that the right adjective, when other animals mourn too?), where the writer grieves the loss of an animal that was important to him.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Hidden Creatures by Dino J. Martins is a love letter to the most misunderstood of Earth’s creatures. Interspersed with personal anecdotes and historical timelines, Dr. Martins holds your hand as he shows you the beauty he sees in every leech and horsehair worm he comes across.
This book is cozy, poetic, and brimming with kindness and curiosity. Never in my life have I been so eager to image search bugs so that I can see their coloring and patterns.
If you like nature and science documentaries, or just want a hopeful, optimistic read in these trying times, let Dr. Martins paint you a soothing word picture featuring primarily blood-sucking insects.
Thank you Knopf for providing this advance copy for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
This book is cozy, poetic, and brimming with kindness and curiosity. Never in my life have I been so eager to image search bugs so that I can see their coloring and patterns.
If you like nature and science documentaries, or just want a hopeful, optimistic read in these trying times, let Dr. Martins paint you a soothing word picture featuring primarily blood-sucking insects.
Thank you Knopf for providing this advance copy for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Okay, so I am a curious mind. I am always wondering what is underneath, what's inside, what grows because of death or eats it or needs... and boy oh boy did this book inform me! I had a blast learning all about pinworms, maggots, bloodworms, botflies, tapeworms, leeches, parasites and more! This book is packed full with not only natures undesirables but with the authors stories about how he came to encounter and study each of these, shall I say delightful, little creatures!
The title says it all, Hidden Creatures is a fascinating read and one for the person in your life who is always asking the question, interested in how disease carries, wants to know how nature decomposes and refreshes life and all the "things" in between. I really had a bast with this book.
The title says it all, Hidden Creatures is a fascinating read and one for the person in your life who is always asking the question, interested in how disease carries, wants to know how nature decomposes and refreshes life and all the "things" in between. I really had a bast with this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book caught me off guard. It absolutely delivered on the skin crawling facts of various creepy crawly parasites. What I wasn't expecting, was to have those facts delivered in such a poetic, almost beautiful way. The enthusiasm that Martins has for his field shines through in his words. He loves what he does and has such an intense thirst for knowledge about these small creatures who are often the subjects of nightmares. Each scene was set in such a way that I felt almost like I was reading a fiction novel about scientists on location. Not only does he cover the parasites, but also the world around them and how they are interconnected with everything from flora and fauna to humans.
I received this gifted arc from the publisher and all thoughts in this review are my own.
I received this gifted arc from the publisher and all thoughts in this review are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
An interesting and detailed exploration of parasites in nature. I appreciated the author’s attempt to break up the scientific information with narrative stories or historical asides, though many felt loosely connected and disrupted the overall flow of the chapters. But overall a good overview of the world of parasites for any interested biologists or nature lovers!
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received this as an ARC from Netgalley.
This book is a series of interesting vignettes about particular parasites, but what I was hoping for was a broad view of parasites and the role they play in the world and the lives of humans. This is not that book. As interesting as the vignettes are, they weren’t interesting enough to hold my attention.
This was a did-not-finish for me.
This book is a series of interesting vignettes about particular parasites, but what I was hoping for was a broad view of parasites and the role they play in the world and the lives of humans. This is not that book. As interesting as the vignettes are, they weren’t interesting enough to hold my attention.
This was a did-not-finish for me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I loved this book. Its outstanding qualities included a highly conversational tone and at times, poetic writing sprinkled with some clever wording worthy of re-reading. I loved how Dr. Martins wrapped his own adventures into the story about the parasites. The pacing was excellent and never got bogged down in minutiae. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the advance reader copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
An informative book about the world of parasites> one learns about how certain parasites are beneficial while others transmit diseases. Learning about the stages the parasites go through as they mature was interesting. The love and enthusiasm that the author has for the world of parasites comes through clearly.
#HiddenCreatures #KnopfPantheonVintageandAnchor #Knopf #NetGalley
#HiddenCreatures #KnopfPantheonVintageandAnchor #Knopf #NetGalley
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was fascinated and grossed out all at the same time lol. Reading about all different types of parasites and what they do was interesting in all aspects of ways.
Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and share my thoughts.
Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and share my thoughts.
June 1, 2026
Hidden Creatures is a delight of a book where you get to learn all about different types of parasites. Have I not sold you yet? Dino Martins is a fantastic guide through this weird and wonderful world. His true inquisitive nature (got to take a specimen!) and love for teaching others about these creatures comes through clearly throughout the novel and it's hard not to get as excited as he is when he encounters one of these specimens. We learn about all sorts of creatures- from bed bugs, to leeches, to fleas and ticks, etc. Some of these are tied to transmission of illnesses (think Malaria, typhoid, Lyme disease) while others can also be used for beneficial purposes (see leeches, maggots). One could get squeamish reading about some of these creatures, but Martins' sheer delight at them is captivating. What a fun and informative read about an area of science that does not get enough love.
Thank you to Knopf for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.
Thank you to Knopf for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Readable, comprehensive, and absolutely worth recommending to both science lit lovers and everyday readers. Especially loved the formatting of this book-- it added a helpful structure for the understanding and kept things accessible.
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