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Book Review: Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Cover art for Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White.

Peachtree Teen, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1682633243

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Hell Followed with Us is an incredible and original book, but it is not an easy read. It is a scream of rage. Make sure to read the author’s content warnings at the beginning of the book.

 

Benji is a trans boy injected with a virus that will turn him into a genocidal monster, a Seraph, for a doomsday cult, the Angels. He tries running away but is captured by the cult’s death squad. A group called the Watch, queer teens inhabiting their destroyed teen center for LGBTQ+ youth, attacks and kills everyone in the death squad except Benji, who is offered refuge by the leader, Nick, an autistic gay boy. Nick knows Benji is the Seraph, but hides it to protect him, believing that his powers will allow him to control the Graces, monstrous creatures made from infected bodies trained by the Angels to attack nonbelievers.

 

The Watch successfully attacks a church with Benji’s help. Benji discovers his fiance, Theo, is hiding in the church, and visits him there, only to find that the visit was used by the Angels as an opportunity to burn down the home of the Watch. As Benji continues to physically disintegrate into the Seraph, he makes a plan with Nick to pretend to return and cooperate with the Angels, despite their murder of his father, transphobia, and religious extremism. While the first plan is botched and Benji turns fully into a Seraph, a second plan unleashes a bloodbath on the Angels and frees the Watch from fear and persecution..

 

Andrew Joseph White wrote this for trans kids facing a hostile world, to give them a mirror of a trans boy who fights back. But it’s not necessary to be trans or queer to be wowed by it.  So many of the major characters were queer that I got to see many different aspects of how they characters experienced their queerness, and it also didn’t become the only factor defining their identities. I loved the found family feeling of the members of the Watch, looking out for each other in a hostile world.

 

It’s difficult to imagine how hard-right evangelical Christianity in this country could get more repressive and violent than it currently is, but somehow White takes it to an even more terrifying extreme. Highly recommended.

 

 

Contains: transphobia, deadnaming, misgendering, graphic violence, domestic, child, and religious abuse, body horror

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on December 18, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe by Ambrose Stolliker

 

The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe by Ambrose Stolliker

 

Muddy Paws Press, 2022

 

ISBN: 9788986056906

 

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition (Amazon.com)

 

The basic plot device is one readers have seen before: a preacher who has lost his faith goes on a journey and faces hardships while attempting to regain his spirituality.  Why read this one?  It’s a quick-paced story that keeps the reader engaged, and shows good imagination.  Describing it as “strange” doesn’t do justice to Father Marlowe’s journey: some parts of it are straight off the clouds in Cuckoo Land.  It’s the creativity that pushes the book to success, and it’s got plenty of it.

 

Father Marlowe has good reason for his lack of faith: his brother (also a priest) killed himself, and Marlowe feels somewhat responsible.  As the book explains later, he may have some justification for feeling that way.

 

Father Marlowe goes to talk to a priest who specializes in faithless preachers, and that’s where his journey into strangeness starts.  The only literary equivalent for his odyssey that comes to mind is Alice in Wonderland, although Father Marlowe falls through a floor instead of down a rabbit-hole.  No world of smoking caterpillars and vanishing cats for the Father Marlowe, though: he winds up in the ocean of the Well of Lost Souls and must journey to the Black Fortress That Sees, in the land of A’ch’Ba’Hu.  (everybody got all that?)  His journey for faith, and his brother’s soul, takes him across all types of terrain, through many hardships, and has quite the collection of eclectic characters: some helpful, some not.  Does he succeed?  Maybe, maybe not… you’ll have to read it to find out.

 

This is written well enough that it’s a page-flipper. It’s got good pacing, and makes you feel for the character.  By partway through, you’ll be wondering how much poor Father Marlowe can handle before he throws in the cassock.  He’s a sympathetic enough character to get the readers on his side.

 

But the real star of the story is the journey itself, and what the Land of Lost Souls holds for the intrepid priest.  Flying boats captained by midgets with wings, demons that have full human bodies as feet, and a really weird take on Charon the boatman, among other things.  The journey becomes a little more “normal” (relatively speaking) towards the end, but it’s engrossing enough to keep the reader zipping through it.

 

There’s also a little hook at the end that leaves room for a sequel, and based on this book, most readers would want to continue the Nighttime Journey.   The only area that maybe could have used a bit more bulk were the flashback sections about Father Marlowe and his brother growing up.  There are enough of them to explain the story, but more would have been nice.  They were engrossing parts, and it felt like there was plenty more narrative to be mined in that section.

 

Bottom line, The Nighttime Journey is a well-written book that scores high on the creativity scale.  Most readers should enjoy this one, regardless of their feelings on theology.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on October 13, 2022 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Extasia by Claire Legrand

Extasia by Claire Legrand

Extasia by Claire Legrand

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062696632

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

Extasia is a fiercely feminist dark novel of a post-apocalyptic community drenched in patriarchy and cult-like violent misogyny straight from The Crucible and Year of the Witching. The dogma is that women were responsible for the destruction of the world and thus four young girls are honored with the “sacred duty” of becoming saints, scapegoats who once a month face brutal mob violence from the community in order to expiate their sins. A serial killer has been murdering men, and the upcoming sainthood of Amity Barrow is expected to bless the community and end the killing. When the murders continue, Amity and her sister saints realize they must find a way to either solve the murders or escape. Just as things seem desperate, she is transported with her sister saints to a secret world, Avazel, and invited to join a coven and learn to wield the magical, dark power of extasia to end the killings and realize her own strength… but there’s more going on under the surface than she knows.

 

Extasia is visceral, violent, and disturbing in its intensity, but Amity is not completely isolated. She develops imperfect but strong relationships with girls and women from her community and the coven that survive even significant disagreements. While it’s somewhat heavy-handed, Legrand has outdone herself in creating a dark, powerful, horror story made even more terrible by the foundation of lies, grisly violence, and hate on which human survival after the apocalypse has been built..Recommended for ages 16+

 

Contains: violence to and killing of animals, attempted rape, torture, gore, murder, body horror, violence, gaslighting, religious trauma.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 7, 2022 by , Reply
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