First impressions review: Hell Followed With Us, by Andrew Joseph White

 

            When I read the description of this book I got very excited because it had so many elements that reminded me of my favorite ongoing manga, ‘Seraph of the End’: A post-apocalyptic world populated by monsters, a cult that’s experimenting on kids to turn them into biblical-angel-themed super-weapons, a queer main character who is an escapee of said cult ending up with a rag-tag found family of child fighters, and a cute but sorta grumpy dark-haired boy in that group that the MC clearly has a crush on. So obviously I had to read it, given that I am not yet sure if ‘Seraph’ is going to end in a way that I like! Indeed, this story does those elements well, but takes them in a different direction that is more inspired by political and religious movements in the US,¹ and that has more true horror². It was an enjoyable read that was hard to put down. However, the way violence is treated is quite different in the two stories.

 

1. Whereas ‘Seraph of the End’ is A) very Japanese overall, and B) clearly written by an author who can view Christian mythology from a more detached standpoint than, say, someone who grew up in close connection to American evangelicalism.

2. Which is saying something, because ‘Seraph’ gets DARK in places!

 

            Now, when I say “enjoyable” I mean “if you are OK with reading horror in general and body horror in particular”. Because within the first 7 pages the main character’s father gets shot in the head and he runs into a monster that is basically a bunch of human bits cobbled together! So if you get to that point and find yourself too disturbed…probably best to DNF there.

 

            Benji is a trans boy who is trying to escape the Angels, an evangelical eco-fascist cult that decided the best solution to a sinful, environmentally deteriorating world was to release a virus they call the Flood. This virus killed a pretty high percentage of the human population and turned many into the monsters the Angels call Graces. Benji, though, is meant to be their Seraph – a perfected form of Grace that will finish the cleansing of the world. He gets recaptured but is rescued by a squad of teenagers led by a crack shot named Nick. Benji is struck by the way Nick doesn’t question his name or gender. However, it turns out that’s not odd at all among the squad, who survived because they were holed up in the local LGBTQ youth center! No, what’s weird is that Nick clocks that A) Benji has probably come from the Angels due to how he talks, and B) is probably infected with some form of the Flood. But he helps the stranger hide these qualities and join his group. Astute readers will of course wonder why! But Nick being so nice to someone who clearly could use it, plus the way Benji is clearly crushing on him immediately, will also tend to make you root for these crazy kids to work things out in the end.

I could have done without Theo. I won’t say Benji’s confused emotions over his ex aren’t realistic or relatable – I’ve felt drawn back to men who weren’t good for me too, because love makes you dumb sometimes. But for that very reason I wasn’t thrilled to have to read it here, even if Benji being 16 and still fighting off indoctrination about purity etc. makes this an especially likely plotline. However, I suppose it means we get to see Benji learn and grow (figuratively and literally). By contrast, I liked that the members of his new family aren’t perfect. They are a bunch of teenagers carrying new and old traumas, and some of them also carry a few not-so-great ideas from the beforetimes. But they are doing their best to look out for each other, and that’s lovely.

 

            While both ‘Seraph of the End’ and this tale are big on found family, the way they handle anger and violence is quite different. Here, I could almost hear a Palpatine whisper of “Yes, let the anger/hate flow through you” sometimes in ways that are cathartic but troubling.

In ‘Seraph’, Yu starts out VERY angry. As a small child, he initially rejects the idea of family that Mika and the other orphans offer him, because of the way his (supposed) birth parents had tainted the term. Then, just as he’s starting to warm up to the idea, vampires kill that new family as they are trying to escape the underground where they had been held as “livestock” following the apocalypse. Yu is the only one to make it out, and the idea of revenge is all he has to keep him going. Even when he’s deepest into it, though, he recognizes that this isn’t something Mika would have wanted for him, or a path he would want others to follow. As soon as he finds out Mika was not fully killed but instead turned into a vampire, he more or less chucks that “kill all vampires” goal straight out the window in favor of: “I am going to protect everyone who matters to me, old and new.” He can be rather reckless in pursuit of that goal, which can sometimes create danger for some of those people. And we as readers were waiting for the point at which he was going to hit a serious trolley problem – which has just arrived! But neither he nor Mika would ever hurt kids. Mika almost does, before he meets up with Yu, when he is in constant pain from the blood cravings – but just a glimpse of their fear reminds him of the monster he doesn’t want to be!

            The author’s letter at the front of this book says it exists: “Because I wanted more stories about boys like me. Because I was angry…But mainly, I wanted to show queer kids that they can walk through hell and come out alive. Maybe not in one piece, maybe forever changed, but alive and worthy of love all the same.” I think that is a worthy goal, and one that this book more or less achieves. It is also worth noting WHEN this book was written: In the middle of a pandemic where there were people refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated, framing the issue in terms of their own freedom instead of protecting the more vulnerable; in a time when Roe v. Wade was repealed, threatening the bodily autonomy of anyone with a uterus; and during an upsurge in transphobic rhetoric and legislation in both the US and the UK. All those things are infuriating, and this story draws on that fury. Moreover, what the Angels do, both the original genocide and how they treat people like Benji, is awful, and they need to be stopped.

However, in doing so, our heroes end up killing some people who were definitely not responsible for their or the world’s suffering. This is probably pretty realistic – war is hell, after all. But it doesn’t feel to me that this book follows up on exploring “the terrible things people do in the name of belief and privilege” with enough reflection on “how much collateral damage is acceptable when taking down an existential threat?” Or even “what happens, psychologically, when these kids have time to reflect on what they just did?” Those would be excellent book club questions, but I feel better when a narrative makes it clearer that the author thought about such things deeply, even if they don’t want to give a definitive opinion in the text. Such reflection isn’t totally absent, but the way the framing seems to tip toward “Eh, they did what they had to do,” concerns me a bit. Especially when “What makes someone a monster?” is a central question, and “Killing innocents” would tend to be high on many people’s list of answers. But others may disagree in their interpretation of the text!

 

Again, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy  this! I like stories that are visceral and angry, especially where that anger is justified. I just would change a few details if I were, say, adapting it to a screenplay, so that I could feel more comfortable saying that, no matter what our central character(s) look like…the villains didn’t actually turn them into monsters.