Hell Followed With Us

★★★★★

Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed With Us is a heartfelt, hope-filled allegory for defeating personal and societal persecution lovingly wrapped in an angsty, gory, monster-filled fight for your life.

The book begins with a thoughtful list of content warnings, a practice I’d encourage more authors to adapt. It’s beneficial for a horror story such as this, which can be such an open-ended category to leave the reader wondering what kind of horror they’re in for. I appreciated that I was left with little doubt about what I’d be reading.

I was struck by how real it felt for a story with so many fantastical elements. The characterizations of queerness, transness, and neurodivergence felt natural and normal. Or, at least, as natural and normal as they could be in a post-apocalyptic world filled with doomsday religious cults, religious extremism, and Eldritch-style monsters. But neither the book’s characterizations nor its many horrors detracted from one another. Fighting for my life against an angelic horror wouldn’t make me any less queer or gender nonconforming. Why shouldn’t that be the case for a fictional queer character? It’s a common complaint of mine when encountering token queer or trans characters in otherwise heteronormative stories. I’m thankful for queer and trans authors who so ably address this.

I appreciated that the story’s hero was a trans masc person surrounded by a queer chosen family, including a character with neopronouns, an aro character, and a character who tries to mask their autism. I can’t imagine what I’d do in the face of Benji’s difficulties. But stumbling on the remnants of a queer center would be high on my wish list.

This story contains many references to transphobia, including deadnaming ad misgendering, highly descriptive violence, gore and body mutilation, religious persecution and abuse, and abusive relationships.