White’s young adult debut novel is uncompromising in tackling horror, anger, and faith. It’s holy horror embodied in a teenage boy. Furthermore, he’s been unwillingly subjected to a variant of the plague, mutating him into a seraphic monster and the cult’s purported savior who will lead the Graces to doomsday. Benji is escaping from the cult when he’s rescued by the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, which, in the time of dystopia, has survived by hunting cult members. Hell Followed with Us opens in a dystopian world where an evangelical cult has bioengineered a plague, creating “Graces,” nightmarish creatures, out of former humans. However, in Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed with Us, 16-year-old trans boy Benji is constantly reminding himself, “It’s okay to be scared,” all while he is mutating into a seraphic creature - fangs, six wings, and many eyes included. Among their ranks are seraphs: six winged fiery beings, “full of eyes all around and inside” (Revelations 4:8, NRSV). Unlike their Renaissance and Hallmark representations, they are described as terrifying beings.

Biblical angels often appear with the greeting, “Do not be afraid,” and still, such a warning reminds us that there is a reason to fear. It reminds us of sirens, dragons, satyrs, and, for the scripturally minded, angels. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once,” writes the poet Ocean Vuong. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick's terms.until he discovers the ALC's mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.“ MONSTER IS not such a terrible thing to be. Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. The ALC's leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji's darkest secret: the cult's bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can't get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him-the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population. Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation. A furious debut novel from Andrew Joseph White about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors.

Hell followed with us book review