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. “ MONSTER IS not such a terrible thing to be.

Benji hell followed with us