An ambitious, angry read. I respect this book a lot for highlighting the trauma of growing up Other in America. Particularly, how being trans can feel like being flayed daily - having outsiders judge and question and dismiss pieces of you - and how trying to understand yourself and live truthfully becomes an out-of-body experience. Unflinchingly, this book addresses the injustice of having one, self-righteous, dogmatic, militant sect in power, and the damage they've done to the next generation in the name of "purity". This is a very 2020's horror story: A community which is exhausted from a pandemic, climate change, a lack of resources, an absence of sympathetic adults or authority figures, and religious zealots persecuting them for simply trying to Be. Praise where praise is due.

But all that said, I can imagine this will be a very divisive book. It is not for the faint of heart. This book is extremely gory, if you're squeamish about body horror do NOT read this book. If you're an Attack on Titan fan, you do you, buddy! I personally did not enjoy reading this book as much as I could have, because of all the fleshy, pukey, mutated, explodey bits... which is to say, all of it. It's not like there's one gory scene, it's constant throughout. And that's kind of the point, I get it: Judge by someone's character, not their body. Buuuuut it was still gross to see our protagonist stroking a tentacle of amorphous flesh from an amalgamated-corpses monster O_O. I think the message would have been enough with our hero Benji morphing into a Seraph, and still being respected by his friends.

Like I stated above, I think this will be a divisive book, and not just on account of the gore. There is a brief, poignant reminder that just because LGBTQA folks are struggling with a lot of common enemies, doesn't mean they're innate allies. There is a lot of in-fighting and gate-keeping, particularly when it comes to language. There's disagreement about the legitimacy of certain pronouns, or sexualities (like if being cis-gay or trans-gay are equally valid). On the issue of "How Many Pronouns is Too Many, Can We Just Have a Few Universal Ones, Please and Thank You", this one lands firmly on "Nah, More is Better, Go Alphabet Mafia!" Some readers might welcome the chance to see so many genders represented, others might roll their eyes at all that new-fangled Millenial babble. Me personally, I just look at the issue from a literary perspective: I don't like when new characters are introduced purely to pedal pronouns. That's it. I barely remember their name, they have no defining personality, no effect on the plot. It is something queer writing struggles with: Opening the dialogue without the story devolving into a list.

I think this book did better than most at articulating what it's like to be trans and trying to find community, self, respect, peace, justice - all while battling endless rage and guilt for not meeting expectations set at birth. It can take a long time to realize that you're a victim of abuse, especially when the abuser is a loved one, and the abuse has been normalized because it's been ongoing since childhood. It can take even longer to sort through your life and unravel how much is You and how much was imposed on you and absorbed by you. Getting a fresh perspective and deciding what to do next is hard for anyone, and I think this book shows that conflict flawlessly.
BUT the result is that we get an untrustworthy trans person X_X. We get someone who lies to his friends, is literally a predator, has the power to brainwash people and manipulate them, infiltrates a religious compound dressed as the wrong gender in order to do harm, and who will go on a blind rampage against any Evangelical Christian. /I/ completely understand the "I tried to be gracious, but I've been hurt too many times, so time to raise some hell, #TransLivesMatter" perspective. I'm just saying, /other/ readers might find Benji to be offensive.

I. LOVE. NICK!!!!! I love how Andrew Joseph White writes what it's like to be autistic. He puts to bed that trope that being autistic means being robotic. It's not that Nick has no emotions, or can't understand the feelings of others. It's that having a feeling and /expressing/ a feeling are two different things, like his brain is processing them separately. He often has to consciously choose his expressions (like smiling), has difficulty reading the motivation behind other's expressions (like crying), and finds certain common expressions off-putting (like hand-holding) but finds other expressions to substitute which mean the same thing. Nick doesn't express his love in a conventional Hollywood way, like a passionate kiss, but he does something just as intimate when he presses his forehead to Benji's. Nick is overstimulated by certain physical things, but he knows this about himself, and he has a series of coping mechanisms; feeling overstimulated doesn't stop him from wanting human connections, and he even shares his calming strategies with Benji in an effort to make Benji feel better. Nick is caring and courageous, and holding together a broken community even as he himself wants to fall to pieces. He is above and beyond any modern YA paranormal love interest on the market right now, fight me! I don't know how the rest of the community feels, but I think Nick is spot-on representation, and I am very thankful he's in this book. I appreciate highlighting the similarities in their struggles, how Benji and Nick had to face the same abusers who denied their normalcy and legitimacy. I think queer fiction can sometimes over-stretch in wanting to prove that civil rights are rights for all, and the LGBTQA struggle aligns with the struggles of PoC, women, Muslims - anyone who is not cis, white, male, and Christian. Like the gender lists, characters can come in just to be the prop, the token black person, the token abused woman, etc. etc. I think this book struggled a little with that, but not much, and not with Nick. The parallels in Nick's chapters are thoughtful and genuine.

Lastly, this book has it out for Evangelical Christians! Mad respect, I am sick to death of all the holy hate crimes, I am here for this. I applaud this book for giving a megaphone to the angry, wounded, marginalized masses. HOWEVER, there were soooo many Bible quotes in this book, and monsters ripped straight out of scripture, that at times it read like Revelation fanfiction XD. I was forcefully reminded of Evangelion. Like... how are you going to use so much Church to attack The Church XD. Who is this for? I mean - that's not fair, I know who it's for, I know there are plenty of people who were raised in the church who later grew up and realized dogma traumatized them in some way. There is a difference between living a devout life and living a blindly devout life, and at no point should anyone be wielding their faith like a weapon. Hopefully, most of you dear readers know that already. But, if you're a Christian ally and you're hoping for A Few Good Christians to show up and help our heroes, you will be sorely disappointed in this book. I thought maybe it was going to say something neutral: It's very obvious that the enemies are American Neo-Nazis, but Benji was struggling with keeping his faith but rejecting dogma; and I thought that was a great, realistic, under-represented way of looking at things. A Not All Christians way of looking at things... Buuuut by the end of the book Benji rejects the notion that he ever had faith at all and becomes an atheist XD. And I just don't know if the world needed a book about how an atheist will annihilate the believers, particularly on the heels of the trans-phobia-affirming stuff I mentioned earlier. I think Benji does more to confirm than to deny The Oppressors' fears. It's not that the righteous fury is wrong or bad or anything, I just think it splits the audience; not everyone agrees with Hammurabi's Code.

If you came here hoping for an underdog story, a tale of adventure and rebellion, a tale of how love and friendship triumph over Evil... yeeeeaaaah, there's that. Buuuut not in a family friendly way. You maaaay be disappointed, reader discretion is advised. If you're here for Kill Bill carnage, pop some popcorn and crack this book open already!!! Do not go gentle into that good night! Rage, rage against the dying of the light!!!