Hell Followed with Us

by Andrew Joseph White

Paperback, 2023

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Publication

Peachtree Teen (2023), Edition: Reprint, 448 pages

Description

Fantasy. Science Fiction & Fantasy. Young Adult Fiction. LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.) HTML:A furious debut novel from Andrew Joseph White about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors. Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick�??s terms�?�until he discovers the ALC�??s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more tha… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member bibliovermis

Wildly horrific, queer sci-fi dystopia about religious terrorist cells, bioweapons, found families, and body horror. Releasing this in Pride month is genius, but it would be even more apropos at the end, to start Wrath month.

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LibraryThing member lavaturtle

This is a brilliant, cathartic story about community and religious abuse and trying to free yourself from the past. I loved the wide diversity of characters, the messy complicated relationships, and the journey the protagonists go on. The cult is just believable enough to be really scary. The

world-building with the Flood is gruesome, but effective. I knew as soon as I heard of this book that I had to read it, and I'm glad I did!

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LibraryThing member psalva

This book had a lot of promise. It was thought provoking in regards to queer survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Also, the description of a religious cult was well done. Unfortunately, I felt that it had too many flaws. The pacing was rough. I started to lose patience with things being drawn out

too long. I feel like it tried to include relationships between characters that ended up not being drawn fully because the plot needed to progress. So some characters end up with loose ends. Also, there were a lot of things left vague. It was unclear how the Graces were controlled. The whole mechanism of the virus was vague and non-specific. There were just a lot of problems. To echo some other reviews, I wish I liked this more because it had potential.

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LibraryThing member kylekatz

2022. An extreme quasi-Christian cult has decided that Earth has grown too full of sin and needs to be cleansed again. They engineer a virus which they call The Flood. It kills off most of humanity. Then they form into militias and go around shooting anyone who’s left. A 16-year-old trans kid,

named Benji escapes from the cult and takes up with a bunch of trans and queer kids living in their old lgbtqia+ center for a while. Unfortunately Benji is kind of a lynchpin in the cult, and they want him back. They’ve infected him with something that’s turning him into a monster to help them finish off the rest of humanity. He opts to finish them off instead and stay with his new friends, even if he is a monster now. Pretty good read. The religious stuff was a little weak and repetitive to me, and I’d rather it had been an adult novel so it could have had some actual sex in it. But probably good for the youngsters. Includes dysphoria, non-binary genders, and the neo-pronouns xe/xem/xyr.

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LibraryThing member QuietNyx

Transphobia, homophobia, and religious trauma are all themed that are hit heavy. You can tell the author wrote this as an act of carthasis, and I deeply related. Something did bother me while I was reading it though, and I realized it was because every character felt like a list of traits that

needed to be checked off. At one point I started to skim the character intros, thinking "you're in an old LGBTQ+ center, I'm assuming everyone is LGBTQ+, please stop listing background characters at me." This book is also incredibly bloated and could do without the collective 100 pages of straight filler and characters who are mentioned exactly once.

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LibraryThing member Griffin_Reads

This is a powerful story about how religious trauma can impact someone and the harm that the religious extremism has on society. The descriptions are impactful, both on accurately showing the trauma queer people can face from exclusion, but also the strength that comes from having a community. It

made me cry several times.

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