Hell Followed With Us, and I’m happy to come along

★★★★☆

(3.5 stars)

I’m not surprised Hell Followed With Us was suggested to me. It was on my list the moment I heard about it, and it combines a bunch of my loves into one: body horror, gore, angels, autism, monsters, trans representation, religious theming… Hell Followed even has a banger of a cover.  

But it was also supposed to be a good book, and I don’t really read good books. When it won my community poll, I was both jazzed and nervous. In truth, I think I’m good at breaking down bad books… and less skilled in discussing books I actually like. I also almost always spoil books I review. With a bad book, I feel like that’s half the point- no one should have to read Save The Pearls, but learning all the bizarre details inside is fun. Spoiling a good book can ruin it though.

Still, I’m going to spoil Hell Followed With Us. I’ll do an introduction with some of my broader thoughts and give warning, but I will be running through the plot beat by beat as always. Leave if you have to.

So. Hell Followed With Us. A trans body horror standalone about a boy who has been made into a biological weapon by a Christian cult and learns to channel his rage back at his oppressors. That’s the rough plot, and that’s honestly the full plot: it’s a stand alone and very straight forward book, and not particularly long either. While there’s depth to the messaging, the story is rather basic.

A Ballad For The Unloved Girl

This is a short story for Missy, a character from those Human Pet books I reviewed long ago. In my review, I carved out a corner for Missy— who suffered on every page and was rewarded with a pointless death. Here, I’ve carved a bigger space for her to live. An ending where she lives and she heals. You don’t need to know the context to understand this story, only know that it is about abuse and the time after it.

“A room with a lock and a TV I control”

Missy, who is a brave and strong young woman, holds her lips tightly together and refuses to sound out the words in front of her. Mrs. Goodemote smiles at her like the cartoon ballerina on the worksheet. D-A-N-C— Dancer, it says below in big capital letters. Next to S-I-N-G-E-R— Singer. The blobby cartoon characters on this page are all like that, ruddy cheeks turned into black splotches on the printout. The page before was where all the ink went, all the colours anyone might pick as a name, labelled for her.

“A lot of girls have been picking names based on their Talents,” Mrs. Goodemote says. “Krystal picked out swan because she loved performing the Swan Princess. Did you have a favourite activity?” Her voice is very slow and gentle. Missy glowers at the word sheet’s third page, the big eyed animals torn from a colouring book.

When she was young, she’d been good at everything. All the girls had been assigned Talents based on early attributes, but she had always taken pride to be more. Better. Best. She was a flautist and a watercolour artist, but she’d made the other girls teach her more during daily recess. How to pirouette and waltz and hit her scales. There’s been a talent show the day before she’d been given a home and she’d been the Best. Best girl. Best in show. She’d worn the ribbon happily then and had cried when it’d been taken away in her new home.

“I was a painter, and I played the flute,” she says. “I was very good.”

Was. It’d been years. Many more since she’d painted. Was— she would be far from the best now.

Lightlark 2: The Worst YA Book Returns With Vengeance

Introduction 

Video version

Here we go again.

Lightlark! A viral tiktok book with very little substance. Look, I don’t think I have to give much backstory here, and if you ever need four to seven hours of explanation, I can suggest a few videos. Lightlark is not worth obsessing over, even as a hater. 

That is why I really do not obsess over it. Rather, it has emerged in my life like a malevolent spectre, coming back a year later to terrorize me for a fitful week before I can again rest. I did not set out to write a four hour review of a bad book last time, I just had 27,000 words to say about it. Here, a year later, with its fame mostly forgotten, I welcome the ghast of Lightlark 2 back inside my body for the sake of entertainment.

After all, I’ve read a lot of people’s comments on the matter over the last year. A lot of people seem very hopeful that tiktok popular kid Alex Aster will have improved and taken the critique her book received to heart. A lot of people seemed to think the first book was Like That just because it was a pet project she’d had since being a teen, and that writing another might force her to have original thoughts.

So I’m here for all you people, and for all the mischievous freaks who enjoy learning about trashfires they never have to actually read: I read Nightbane, and get this, you won’t believe it, but- 

It was exactly as bad as Lightlark.

Let’s see how long it takes me this time.

I think the “Precious Blood” trilogy might count as a hate crime: a review

☆☆☆☆☆ (0 Stars)

I understand how the internet works well enough, and I know people prefer to watch videos about subjects they are already familiar with. I get it. But I beg you, please, to listen to this video. 

I have found a book trilogy unlike any other, the kind of thing bad book lovers have always sought: unchecked, ripened outrageousness and offense in a mainstream YA veneer. This series came out from Simon and Schuster in 2013 and I keep getting the impulse to contact every name involved in the acknowledgement section and shake them down for answers. This is uniquely one of the most horrifyingly bad books I’ve ever discovered and no one knows about it. There’s way more wiggle room for indie novels, but this wasn’t indie. So many people had to sign off on what I’m going to tell you, edit and improve it, and that in itself is a nightmare.

This is because The Blessed, later renamed Precious Blood, is both floor to ceiling unstopped insanity but also profoundly harmful. I’m going to list content warnings after this introduction and more than ever I am not kidding. 

This is a trilogy about three teenage girls who torture and die after meeting a hot boy once. It’s a story about three teens who murder without abandon and who are glorified for it because their foes are unnamed villains and homeless drug addicts. This is one of the most visceral violent and hateful books I’ve ever read and I am far from sensitive to extreme content. This is a manifesto of death for vaguely defined faith but in the style of gossip girl.

It is ludicrous and puzzling and the author probably was paid more money at once than you ever will be for it, by a big 5 publisher. Please, if you can handle it, listen to me. My tale of woe. To Precious Blood and all its absurdity. 

Who let this get made?