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The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.
399 pages, ebook
First published September 5, 2023
About the author
Andrew Joseph White
12 books3,890 followersAndrew Joseph White is a trans, autistic, best-selling author from Virginia, where he grew up falling in love with monsters and wishing he could be one too. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University in 2022. His debut novel, Hell Followed With Us, was a William C. Morris Award Finalist, and his second, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, received a 2024 Stonewall Honor. Compound Fracture is his third novel.
He can be found at andrewjosephwhite.com or on Twitter and Instagram at @AJWhiteAuthor.
He can be found at andrewjosephwhite.com or on Twitter and Instagram at @AJWhiteAuthor.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,017 reviews
April 15, 2023
Got to read this early on account of the fact that I am literally marrying the author
I watched this book go through so many iterations and changes and versions, become so many different things than it started out as, morph and change and transform into what it is here and damn, this is gonna mean the world to so many people. The anger and the tenderness and the way they intertwine. It’s a validation and a call to arms all at once for everyone who needs it, wrapped up in one big purple tinted, cloyingly floral atmospheric package, and I cannot wait to watch it find its people.
I watched this book go through so many iterations and changes and versions, become so many different things than it started out as, morph and change and transform into what it is here and damn, this is gonna mean the world to so many people. The anger and the tenderness and the way they intertwine. It’s a validation and a call to arms all at once for everyone who needs it, wrapped up in one big purple tinted, cloyingly floral atmospheric package, and I cannot wait to watch it find its people.
May 21, 2023
So I went into The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth knowing I would be properly horrified and most likely sick to my stomach. I did not expect to feel so seen that I ached.
Does the main character graphically and in full detail perform a c-section? Yes! Are the horrors that those deemed “unsavory” to society are subjected to brutally splashed across the pages? Yes! But there is also a something at it’s core, some kind of acceptance and blood-soaked hope that made it, almost comforting to read. To see that with the scars and the bruises and the blood and everything telling you that there is something wrong, there’s the chance to continue breathing. Even if there is the desperate push to hide it, to cover it, to change it, it is still possible to emerge whole, battered maybe, but still the same person that the world tried so hard to repress, because that kind of person is worthy of life and love.
To see a trans main character, with a brain like mine, who gets overwhelmed and cries and apologizes over and over, who doesn’t really get people or what they try to say, who moves through the world so similarly to the way I do was something I am going to hold close. To read a book so darkly horrific, so brutally brilliant, and to point to the main character and go “hey, that’s me”, to deeply understand their reactions and actions, just damn. It’s special.
SO, all of that is to say is that this book is stark in it’s honesty. It’s horror is on full display, both from the artfully crafted gore and the acts that somehow come from other humans. Yet the allowance for humanity to exist in the face of this in all its forms - gut wrenching rage, overwhelming terror, inexplicable love - offers a comfort. Because this is one of the darkest books I’ve read, but it’s love for what has been deemed “too much” or “odd” or is where it’s true brilliance shines.
Does the main character graphically and in full detail perform a c-section? Yes! Are the horrors that those deemed “unsavory” to society are subjected to brutally splashed across the pages? Yes! But there is also a something at it’s core, some kind of acceptance and blood-soaked hope that made it, almost comforting to read. To see that with the scars and the bruises and the blood and everything telling you that there is something wrong, there’s the chance to continue breathing. Even if there is the desperate push to hide it, to cover it, to change it, it is still possible to emerge whole, battered maybe, but still the same person that the world tried so hard to repress, because that kind of person is worthy of life and love.
To see a trans main character, with a brain like mine, who gets overwhelmed and cries and apologizes over and over, who doesn’t really get people or what they try to say, who moves through the world so similarly to the way I do was something I am going to hold close. To read a book so darkly horrific, so brutally brilliant, and to point to the main character and go “hey, that’s me”, to deeply understand their reactions and actions, just damn. It’s special.
SO, all of that is to say is that this book is stark in it’s honesty. It’s horror is on full display, both from the artfully crafted gore and the acts that somehow come from other humans. Yet the allowance for humanity to exist in the face of this in all its forms - gut wrenching rage, overwhelming terror, inexplicable love - offers a comfort. Because this is one of the darkest books I’ve read, but it’s love for what has been deemed “too much” or “odd” or is where it’s true brilliance shines.
October 8, 2024
When the dead men come, we are waiting. We have been waiting so long.
This is why I’m open to reading different genres, and why I’m currently going out of my comfort zone. Andrew Joseph White and books like this are the type of stories I know many individuals wish they had before, years ago, and I’m glad a voice like this now exists.
The concept of this story is gory, horrifying and brutal, but also, unfortunately, quite realistic, a voice for the voiceless. Featured with autism and trans rep during the 1800s in England makes it all the more interesting. It’s horror, but it’s not the scary type in my opinion, the kind to jump scare you, but the creepy, violent kind.
The historical aspect of it would normally be something I wouldn’t like and would struggle getting through, but Andrew’s writing outshined many of the issues I have with historical fiction. It’s poignant, accurate, and realistic. The descriptions, reality, and life of women and queer individuals during this time was inviting yet horrifying. The concept of violet eyed women having what’s called the veil sickness is a traumatizing event. Think of it as these women not being deemed proper, and therefore, because they are violet eyed and considered to have “veil sickness,” they are sent to a certain school to be “fixed.” In this case, we follow Silas, a trans autistic boy. Silas’ transgender and autistic identities aren’t just there for the sake of it; they make up his character and personality so well, adding layers to his character. Even if I’m not autistic, this can easily teach you how difficult it must have been for undiagnosed individuals back then, especially when autism was not taken seriously.
Because that’s not what Veil sickness really is. The sickness is what comes after we open the Veil: being with men, rejecting men, acting out, acting alive. If we are not perfect, obviously our power has corrupted us. It doesn’t matter how closely we’ve followed their laws. It doesn’t matter if there’s proof or not. We’re sick, so we’re guilty. That’s all the evidence they need. The only things we have in common are violet eyes, and men who want us enough to bother trying to fix.
The author doesn’t hold back on the gory details, which I actually found myself fascinated by reading. It all felt accurate and proper, especially during that time. The autistic rep and and trans rep was also written incredibly well, even if I’m neither. I know it’s an own voices in a way, but I do think the author’s writing abilities to write these personal relations and connections tied into it as well. We’re witnessing Silas’s struggles with his identity, even if he accepts who he is. Body dysmorphia, doubts, concerns, fear—it’s all poignant and felt. But Silas doesn’t give up where his limits end. I loved his willingness to fight for the girls and to expose the truth. I loved his tendency to continue fighting for himself, to give himself what was taken away from him. I loved his character growth, from being scared and unwilling to seeing him act out no matter the future consequences. I loved Daphne’s dedication to Silas, to providing him a love and secret life he never through he could have. And I was glad that Mary came through in the end, and she wasn’t ever evil but just scared and misunderstood. I normally don’t like it when villainous characters get a redemption arc, but I feel like Mary was always on the way to getting it. We’re just meant to be patient and slowly see her path unfold.
There’s a bit of a fantasy/paranormal element to it, the historical accuracy makes the read much more chilling and riveting. It’s gross, detailed, and vile. It’s not something the author needed to hide and it’s not something the author needed to beat around the bush with.
Personally, I felt like the romance between Silas and Daphne was a bit unnecessary. It felt like it was done and added for the sake of it, as if the platonic side of it wouldn’t be enough. This isn’t something that bothered me, per se, more like something I found unnecessary and don’t think it added much to the story. I wish there was more complexity to their relationship instead of putting them together. Regardless, I do understand and can see how and why the two fell for each other, as they were of a similar kind yet different (both trans, with Silas being a trans man and Daphne a trans woman). They were a comfort for each other, providing a safety net for one another that others didn’t see or understand.
I feel like I’m unable to say more about this story. I greatly enjoyed it, despite how long it took me to read (life is busy) and the horror genre. If I could find more novels like this, I will certainly be reading them at some point. Andrew’s words are a special kind, and I’m grateful he is a voice in the publishing industry writing what he’s writing. I cannot wait to read his other two novels and continue keeping up with his future publishing works.
Do you know how angry the dead can be?
This is why I’m open to reading different genres, and why I’m currently going out of my comfort zone. Andrew Joseph White and books like this are the type of stories I know many individuals wish they had before, years ago, and I’m glad a voice like this now exists.
The concept of this story is gory, horrifying and brutal, but also, unfortunately, quite realistic, a voice for the voiceless. Featured with autism and trans rep during the 1800s in England makes it all the more interesting. It’s horror, but it’s not the scary type in my opinion, the kind to jump scare you, but the creepy, violent kind.
The historical aspect of it would normally be something I wouldn’t like and would struggle getting through, but Andrew’s writing outshined many of the issues I have with historical fiction. It’s poignant, accurate, and realistic. The descriptions, reality, and life of women and queer individuals during this time was inviting yet horrifying. The concept of violet eyed women having what’s called the veil sickness is a traumatizing event. Think of it as these women not being deemed proper, and therefore, because they are violet eyed and considered to have “veil sickness,” they are sent to a certain school to be “fixed.” In this case, we follow Silas, a trans autistic boy. Silas’ transgender and autistic identities aren’t just there for the sake of it; they make up his character and personality so well, adding layers to his character. Even if I’m not autistic, this can easily teach you how difficult it must have been for undiagnosed individuals back then, especially when autism was not taken seriously.
Because that’s not what Veil sickness really is. The sickness is what comes after we open the Veil: being with men, rejecting men, acting out, acting alive. If we are not perfect, obviously our power has corrupted us. It doesn’t matter how closely we’ve followed their laws. It doesn’t matter if there’s proof or not. We’re sick, so we’re guilty. That’s all the evidence they need. The only things we have in common are violet eyes, and men who want us enough to bother trying to fix.
The author doesn’t hold back on the gory details, which I actually found myself fascinated by reading. It all felt accurate and proper, especially during that time. The autistic rep and and trans rep was also written incredibly well, even if I’m neither. I know it’s an own voices in a way, but I do think the author’s writing abilities to write these personal relations and connections tied into it as well. We’re witnessing Silas’s struggles with his identity, even if he accepts who he is. Body dysmorphia, doubts, concerns, fear—it’s all poignant and felt. But Silas doesn’t give up where his limits end. I loved his willingness to fight for the girls and to expose the truth. I loved his tendency to continue fighting for himself, to give himself what was taken away from him. I loved his character growth, from being scared and unwilling to seeing him act out no matter the future consequences. I loved Daphne’s dedication to Silas, to providing him a love and secret life he never through he could have. And I was glad that Mary came through in the end, and she wasn’t ever evil but just scared and misunderstood. I normally don’t like it when villainous characters get a redemption arc, but I feel like Mary was always on the way to getting it. We’re just meant to be patient and slowly see her path unfold.
There’s a bit of a fantasy/paranormal element to it, the historical accuracy makes the read much more chilling and riveting. It’s gross, detailed, and vile. It’s not something the author needed to hide and it’s not something the author needed to beat around the bush with.
Personally, I felt like the romance between Silas and Daphne was a bit unnecessary. It felt like it was done and added for the sake of it, as if the platonic side of it wouldn’t be enough. This isn’t something that bothered me, per se, more like something I found unnecessary and don’t think it added much to the story. I wish there was more complexity to their relationship instead of putting them together. Regardless, I do understand and can see how and why the two fell for each other, as they were of a similar kind yet different (both trans, with Silas being a trans man and Daphne a trans woman). They were a comfort for each other, providing a safety net for one another that others didn’t see or understand.
I feel like I’m unable to say more about this story. I greatly enjoyed it, despite how long it took me to read (life is busy) and the horror genre. If I could find more novels like this, I will certainly be reading them at some point. Andrew’s words are a special kind, and I’m grateful he is a voice in the publishing industry writing what he’s writing. I cannot wait to read his other two novels and continue keeping up with his future publishing works.
Do you know how angry the dead can be?
September 10, 2023
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
They must have convinced themselves they would never rot in the same dirt we do.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth has carved me wide open and laid me bare, leaving me to gather up the pieces and stitch myself back together.
I can't remember the last time I read a book with this much ferocity but perhaps it would have been disrespectful to approach reading such a ferocious book in any other way. Through a gothic historical medical horror, White cleanly dissects the topic of “female hysteria,” making an incision right at the intersection of ableism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in the body of capitalist patriarchy. This book is bleeding with precise commentary, certain to leave its readers with the scars of its haunting prose and unflinching rage.
I wouldn't say I'm usually one for medical horror, and upon hearing that the level of this book's gore includes a graphic, on-page, at-home Cesarian abortion, I wasn't sure that this story would be for me. But amidst all the guts and gore, this book has a beautiful beating heart. One filled with hope and solidarity. And it feels weird to say I found safety and comfort in this story–that it felt like a huge hug and that it held me in its blood-soaked arms and said: "I see you, and you've never been alone," but it did. Though I guess that's the point of this tale: that no matter what the world tries to tell you, you are perfect and whole and worthy of love, even if you've spent your whole life trying to amputate parts of yourself in order to fit an image the world has told you to be. And that sometimes, you'll find the truest reflection of yourself in the most unlikely places.
This book is for the rabbit-hearted kids who are sick of either having to tear themselves down or tear down the people around them in order to survive. For the kids who are sick of walking on broken glass, but are ready to rip those shards out of their feet and wield them like a knife instead. And for the kids who never got the chance to.
If Andrew Joseph White wasn't a favorite author of mine before this, he certainly is now.
CW: extensive medical gore, medical experimentation, eye horror, sexual assault/rape (implied, on-page), sexual harassment, abortion, forced institutionalization, confinement, conversion therapy, sexism, transphobia, deadnaming/misgendering, pedophilia, forced marriage character death, dead body, death of mother (past), death of father, abusive parents emesis, miscarriage (mention)
They must have convinced themselves they would never rot in the same dirt we do.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth has carved me wide open and laid me bare, leaving me to gather up the pieces and stitch myself back together.
I can't remember the last time I read a book with this much ferocity but perhaps it would have been disrespectful to approach reading such a ferocious book in any other way. Through a gothic historical medical horror, White cleanly dissects the topic of “female hysteria,” making an incision right at the intersection of ableism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in the body of capitalist patriarchy. This book is bleeding with precise commentary, certain to leave its readers with the scars of its haunting prose and unflinching rage.
I wouldn't say I'm usually one for medical horror, and upon hearing that the level of this book's gore includes a graphic, on-page, at-home Cesarian abortion, I wasn't sure that this story would be for me. But amidst all the guts and gore, this book has a beautiful beating heart. One filled with hope and solidarity. And it feels weird to say I found safety and comfort in this story–that it felt like a huge hug and that it held me in its blood-soaked arms and said: "I see you, and you've never been alone," but it did. Though I guess that's the point of this tale: that no matter what the world tries to tell you, you are perfect and whole and worthy of love, even if you've spent your whole life trying to amputate parts of yourself in order to fit an image the world has told you to be. And that sometimes, you'll find the truest reflection of yourself in the most unlikely places.
This book is for the rabbit-hearted kids who are sick of either having to tear themselves down or tear down the people around them in order to survive. For the kids who are sick of walking on broken glass, but are ready to rip those shards out of their feet and wield them like a knife instead. And for the kids who never got the chance to.
If Andrew Joseph White wasn't a favorite author of mine before this, he certainly is now.
CW: extensive medical gore, medical experimentation, eye horror, sexual assault/rape (implied, on-page), sexual harassment, abortion, forced institutionalization, confinement, conversion therapy, sexism, transphobia, deadnaming/misgendering, pedophilia, forced marriage character death, dead body, death of mother (past), death of father, abusive parents emesis, miscarriage (mention)
May 24, 2024
1.5 stars.
To preface this review, this was one of my most highly anticipated reads for 2023. The plot description was like seeing a mirror reflect my experiences, which is important in a genre with few characters I can relate to on such a level. Like Silas, I am trans - although I am transmasculine, not a trans man. I have faced hardships for being autistic in a very similar way to Silas, with the belief that the autism could be cured to reveal a perfect, normal child. I am thrilled that this book brings characters with these experiences to traditional publishing, where I only hope that other works can follow suit. This is an OwnVoices review.
The preamble also contextualises what my primary issues were with the book. A common pitfall I see when writing characters of a specific marginalisation is to make their entire character stem from that marginalisation. At times, writers setting out to create explicit representation for a particular condition fall into a checklist of traits, while failing to flesh out their personality or motivations beyond this. Silas wants to become a surgeon in a world that tells him he cannot. Surgery is his special interest - for an autistic person, a topic that can become so all-consuming that it can become a lens to interpret the world through. The author mentioned that he purposefully attempts to write through such a narrative lens as much as possible.
However, this seems to be Silas’s only interest. Most of what he does was in service of becoming a surgeon. The metaphors in the story were surgery-related. His life flashbacks revolved around surgery. I understand thematic resonance, but I take issue with this being his only passion. I have experienced similarly intense special interests, but they have never been the only facet to my existence. I was not solely, exclusively motivated by my special interest(s). Autistic people can have wants and personality traits outside of a special interest. This resulted in Silas reading as a checklist of symptoms - a realistic checklist, but missing the dimension that makes someone an autistic person, rather than autism itself.
This also included his body language, which was primarily examples of stimming (repetitive motions to regulate sensory input). I, and most other autistic people I know, have body language that is not exclusively stimming. I appreciate the inclusion, but it once again contributes to Silas coming off as “autism, the checklist”, rather than as a character who is autistic.
The audience is told that Silas has a sense of justice and that he is empathetic. These are welcome qualities in fictional autistic characters. However, we are not informed how Silas developed these traits. He was brought up in an upper class English family. Many autistic people are unbothered by social norms, including myself, even while being raised in oppressive environments. Still, it frequently takes an outside impetus to begin to question what someone has been raised with. It would have given him more dimension to learn what motivated him to break away, to give him the tools to question the situation he grew up in.
The only external factor Silas experiences is his brother George, who taught him how to perform surgery. However, this relationship reads as considering that the very first scene of their dynamic involves George discouraging Silas and treating him as a second priority to his wife. George upholds the same systems that his and Silas's parents do, so it is unclear whether his influence would have resulted in Silas questioning the environment he was raised in. I believe that was the implication, but it fell flat.
Most of the other characters feel one-dimensional. Silas meets an ensemble cast of waifs at the sanatorium, and they are mostly defined by one trait - the brash one, the shy one, the one who upholds the system to her own detriment. We are not given an in-depth exploration of any of these characters, and they begin to blur into one another. By the end, I could hardly remember who was who. Much like Silas, they felt more like devices to further the plot, rather than fully-realised individuals with their own desires.
Similarly, most of the antagonists aren’t given much depth other than what is apparent from their first introduction. Patriarchy, colonialism, and eugenics are unavoidable topics when it comes to the historic suffering of marginalised communities. However, the antagonists feel more like abstract embodiments of these ideas, rather than people who hold these supremacist and paternalistic ideologies. Silas’s parents are one-note - they want him to be their perfect daughter. The headmaster is one-note - he wants to break the students into behaving like perfect women. There is no further dimension. In particular, the portrayal of Silas's parents greatly disappointed me. They read as caricatures of abusive parents, rather than a genuine examination of where anti-autistic ideas stem from. It personally hurts to see a depiction of anti-autistic ableism perpetuated by parents that comes off as so hollow. It feels as if AJW has taken very real pain and distilled it into "these are cardboard cutouts who are cartoonishly evil metaphors for the oppressive forces of a historic era". Of all of this book's flaws, this depiction hurt me on a personal level.
In some works, particularly those written by white authors, that antagonists who uphold oppressive systems are frequently treated as abstract forces, rather than people. As a point of comparison, R.F. Kuang’s Babel depicts a similar time period and issues of historic oppression - in Babel’s case, surrounding non-white characters. Kuang presents a range of antagonists who uphold oppressive systems, with different motivations for doing so. She doesn’t shy away from making the audience examine how they could fall into the same ideologies. The Spirit Bares its Teeth puts distance between the audience and the antagonists, as if reassuring them that they could never perpetuate the same ableism or paternalism.
The Speaker society is portrayed as powerful and aids in the colonial projects of the UK government, but this comes off as a misunderstanding of how British colonialism has worked historically. Among other goals, it has been based on resource extraction and supplanting existing populations for the benefit of the colonists. The book fails to depict how its magic system benefits this colonial system, aside from brief mentions of mediums travelling to suppress dead factory workers. It is also difficult to see how mediums came to such societal power, if others do not have the ability to independently verify what the mediums claim ghosts say, and that mediums are not perpetuating wide-spread hoaxes. How would this have impacted spiritual beliefs? Why does the population, particularly the colonial system, put stock in spiritualism? This does not factor into my rating, but I feel like there was a missed opportunity to include how religion was historically used as a tool of cultural imperialism.
Structurally, the book is a fast read. However, for a gothic horror, the suspense is dampened by the very first page of the book describing It does not become much of a stretch to figure out what the mystery is, which dampens the suspense. The other major twists, as mentioned before, are obvious from the outset. The mystery is not elaborated on much, and neither is the nature of the Speakers or the magic system. There is an entire cabinet of haunted artefacts in the sanatorium, but These elements felt unsatisfactory.
As someone who is interested in fashion history, being trans is not at odds with this. The author trots out the tired trope of corsets being a shorthand for historic oppression rather than the support garments that they were. Not all corsets were meant to give the wearer an hourglass shape, or tight lace them into wasp-waisted submission. Historic corset styles can compress the chest in a similar way to binding, especially 17th and 18th century stays which give the figure a conical silhouette. Historic silhouettes were usually achieved by padding out, rather than by modifying the body itself like many modern garments do. Many corsetry techniques are used when manufacturing modern binders, and there are modern binders that resemble stays and corsets. Furthermore, I am speaking from a Western European perspective, as chest covering does not have the same gendered connotations in all societies.
I enjoyed the atmosphere that White built up. I was able to thoroughly visualise the setting as the book went along, and there were some creative supernatural descriptions. Daphne was one of the two characters I enjoyed, as her interest in literature and resourcefulness made her endearing. Mary was another highlight, as she was given the most dimension out of the sanatorium girls - I found her to be morbidly sweet, as well as how active of a character she felt. However, these did not do much to counter the issues I had.
By the end, I was left wanting much more. Trans rage and atmosphere alone do not add up to a compelling narrative.
To preface this review, this was one of my most highly anticipated reads for 2023. The plot description was like seeing a mirror reflect my experiences, which is important in a genre with few characters I can relate to on such a level. Like Silas, I am trans - although I am transmasculine, not a trans man. I have faced hardships for being autistic in a very similar way to Silas, with the belief that the autism could be cured to reveal a perfect, normal child. I am thrilled that this book brings characters with these experiences to traditional publishing, where I only hope that other works can follow suit. This is an OwnVoices review.
The preamble also contextualises what my primary issues were with the book. A common pitfall I see when writing characters of a specific marginalisation is to make their entire character stem from that marginalisation. At times, writers setting out to create explicit representation for a particular condition fall into a checklist of traits, while failing to flesh out their personality or motivations beyond this. Silas wants to become a surgeon in a world that tells him he cannot. Surgery is his special interest - for an autistic person, a topic that can become so all-consuming that it can become a lens to interpret the world through. The author mentioned that he purposefully attempts to write through such a narrative lens as much as possible.
However, this seems to be Silas’s only interest. Most of what he does was in service of becoming a surgeon. The metaphors in the story were surgery-related. His life flashbacks revolved around surgery. I understand thematic resonance, but I take issue with this being his only passion. I have experienced similarly intense special interests, but they have never been the only facet to my existence. I was not solely, exclusively motivated by my special interest(s). Autistic people can have wants and personality traits outside of a special interest. This resulted in Silas reading as a checklist of symptoms - a realistic checklist, but missing the dimension that makes someone an autistic person, rather than autism itself.
This also included his body language, which was primarily examples of stimming (repetitive motions to regulate sensory input). I, and most other autistic people I know, have body language that is not exclusively stimming. I appreciate the inclusion, but it once again contributes to Silas coming off as “autism, the checklist”, rather than as a character who is autistic.
The audience is told that Silas has a sense of justice and that he is empathetic. These are welcome qualities in fictional autistic characters. However, we are not informed how Silas developed these traits. He was brought up in an upper class English family. Many autistic people are unbothered by social norms, including myself, even while being raised in oppressive environments. Still, it frequently takes an outside impetus to begin to question what someone has been raised with. It would have given him more dimension to learn what motivated him to break away, to give him the tools to question the situation he grew up in.
The only external factor Silas experiences is his brother George, who taught him how to perform surgery. However, this relationship reads as considering that the very first scene of their dynamic involves George discouraging Silas and treating him as a second priority to his wife. George upholds the same systems that his and Silas's parents do, so it is unclear whether his influence would have resulted in Silas questioning the environment he was raised in. I believe that was the implication, but it fell flat.
Most of the other characters feel one-dimensional. Silas meets an ensemble cast of waifs at the sanatorium, and they are mostly defined by one trait - the brash one, the shy one, the one who upholds the system to her own detriment. We are not given an in-depth exploration of any of these characters, and they begin to blur into one another. By the end, I could hardly remember who was who. Much like Silas, they felt more like devices to further the plot, rather than fully-realised individuals with their own desires.
Similarly, most of the antagonists aren’t given much depth other than what is apparent from their first introduction. Patriarchy, colonialism, and eugenics are unavoidable topics when it comes to the historic suffering of marginalised communities. However, the antagonists feel more like abstract embodiments of these ideas, rather than people who hold these supremacist and paternalistic ideologies. Silas’s parents are one-note - they want him to be their perfect daughter. The headmaster is one-note - he wants to break the students into behaving like perfect women. There is no further dimension. In particular, the portrayal of Silas's parents greatly disappointed me. They read as caricatures of abusive parents, rather than a genuine examination of where anti-autistic ideas stem from. It personally hurts to see a depiction of anti-autistic ableism perpetuated by parents that comes off as so hollow. It feels as if AJW has taken very real pain and distilled it into "these are cardboard cutouts who are cartoonishly evil metaphors for the oppressive forces of a historic era". Of all of this book's flaws, this depiction hurt me on a personal level.
In some works, particularly those written by white authors, that antagonists who uphold oppressive systems are frequently treated as abstract forces, rather than people. As a point of comparison, R.F. Kuang’s Babel depicts a similar time period and issues of historic oppression - in Babel’s case, surrounding non-white characters. Kuang presents a range of antagonists who uphold oppressive systems, with different motivations for doing so. She doesn’t shy away from making the audience examine how they could fall into the same ideologies. The Spirit Bares its Teeth puts distance between the audience and the antagonists, as if reassuring them that they could never perpetuate the same ableism or paternalism.
The Speaker society is portrayed as powerful and aids in the colonial projects of the UK government, but this comes off as a misunderstanding of how British colonialism has worked historically. Among other goals, it has been based on resource extraction and supplanting existing populations for the benefit of the colonists. The book fails to depict how its magic system benefits this colonial system, aside from brief mentions of mediums travelling to suppress dead factory workers. It is also difficult to see how mediums came to such societal power, if others do not have the ability to independently verify what the mediums claim ghosts say, and that mediums are not perpetuating wide-spread hoaxes. How would this have impacted spiritual beliefs? Why does the population, particularly the colonial system, put stock in spiritualism? This does not factor into my rating, but I feel like there was a missed opportunity to include how religion was historically used as a tool of cultural imperialism.
Structurally, the book is a fast read. However, for a gothic horror, the suspense is dampened by the very first page of the book describing It does not become much of a stretch to figure out what the mystery is, which dampens the suspense. The other major twists, as mentioned before, are obvious from the outset. The mystery is not elaborated on much, and neither is the nature of the Speakers or the magic system. There is an entire cabinet of haunted artefacts in the sanatorium, but These elements felt unsatisfactory.
As someone who is interested in fashion history, being trans is not at odds with this. The author trots out the tired trope of corsets being a shorthand for historic oppression rather than the support garments that they were. Not all corsets were meant to give the wearer an hourglass shape, or tight lace them into wasp-waisted submission. Historic corset styles can compress the chest in a similar way to binding, especially 17th and 18th century stays which give the figure a conical silhouette. Historic silhouettes were usually achieved by padding out, rather than by modifying the body itself like many modern garments do. Many corsetry techniques are used when manufacturing modern binders, and there are modern binders that resemble stays and corsets. Furthermore, I am speaking from a Western European perspective, as chest covering does not have the same gendered connotations in all societies.
I enjoyed the atmosphere that White built up. I was able to thoroughly visualise the setting as the book went along, and there were some creative supernatural descriptions. Daphne was one of the two characters I enjoyed, as her interest in literature and resourcefulness made her endearing. Mary was another highlight, as she was given the most dimension out of the sanatorium girls - I found her to be morbidly sweet, as well as how active of a character she felt. However, these did not do much to counter the issues I had.
By the end, I was left wanting much more. Trans rage and atmosphere alone do not add up to a compelling narrative.
July 13, 2024
"There is a difference between horrible things that have gone on forever, because you can almost convince yourself of the inevitably of an age-old cruelty, or almost it’s necessity. But not a new one. With a new one, the change is too great, the wound too new, and you cannot convince yourself that it is simply the way of the world."
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is an incredible YA horror novel about Silas, an autistic trans boy in 1800s England who has violet eyes - and therefore a connection to the spirits beyond the veil. Because he is perceived to be a girl and has been causing "problems" (see: he's autistic and trans in 1800s England), he is sent to a school to reform unruly girls with violet eyes so they can become better wives (red flags should definitely be popping up about this school). This already terrible and abusive school is something much more sinister under the surface and Silas is recruited by the spirits of past school girls to get to the bottom of it.
I truly think Andrew Joseph White is one of the most important authors of our time as he is doing something truly amazing with his books. We follow Silas as he grapples not only with not being able to transition in a society that hates him for being trans, but also as someone who is ridiculed for not understanding social norms .Since he is perceived as a woman, he is also not allowed to become a surgeon because of the rampant sexism of society and while at the school, we see the reality of how the only option for a "woman" who is not up to society's standards is to be abused while trying their best to conform to society or die a painful death. The side characters - specifically the young women in the school with Silas and his fiance - are incredibly well thought out and nuanced characters. All of their storylines were absolutely heartbreaking in a way that really highlights how society reacted to women who weren't just well behaved dolls. This was one of those stories where I had to put the book down multiple times during the last 100 pages to cry and collect myself because everything was hitting me so hard.
This book is a bit gory but it is all done for such a specific purpose and adds so much depth to the story. Everything about this book was incredibly done and I would easily recommend this book to everyone.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is an incredible YA horror novel about Silas, an autistic trans boy in 1800s England who has violet eyes - and therefore a connection to the spirits beyond the veil. Because he is perceived to be a girl and has been causing "problems" (see: he's autistic and trans in 1800s England), he is sent to a school to reform unruly girls with violet eyes so they can become better wives (red flags should definitely be popping up about this school). This already terrible and abusive school is something much more sinister under the surface and Silas is recruited by the spirits of past school girls to get to the bottom of it.
I truly think Andrew Joseph White is one of the most important authors of our time as he is doing something truly amazing with his books. We follow Silas as he grapples not only with not being able to transition in a society that hates him for being trans, but also as someone who is ridiculed for not understanding social norms .Since he is perceived as a woman, he is also not allowed to become a surgeon because of the rampant sexism of society and while at the school, we see the reality of how the only option for a "woman" who is not up to society's standards is to be abused while trying their best to conform to society or die a painful death. The side characters - specifically the young women in the school with Silas and his fiance - are incredibly well thought out and nuanced characters. All of their storylines were absolutely heartbreaking in a way that really highlights how society reacted to women who weren't just well behaved dolls. This was one of those stories where I had to put the book down multiple times during the last 100 pages to cry and collect myself because everything was hitting me so hard.
This book is a bit gory but it is all done for such a specific purpose and adds so much depth to the story. Everything about this book was incredibly done and I would easily recommend this book to everyone.
October 3, 2023
Can I be fair and objective with this book? Probably not because I want White's literary voice to have existed in my life 20 years ago when I was a teenager who desperately needed a voice like his even though I didn't know it at the time and I'm so glad that it exists now that I have no words. When I tell you that I literally squealed with delight when my ARC request was approved...
Alright, on with the review. White captures the small daily horrors of the autistic experience as well as the sweeping systemic ones and blends them masterfully with the supernatural, the result is raw, honest, and refreshing. While this book takes place in something akin to the Victorian era its commentary regarding ableism is shockingly and devastatingly timely. The pacing is a rather slow and steady one where the horror deepens through accumulation rather than outright shock. Silas is endearing as all effs and it makes the whole thing even harder to read because you just don't want bad things to be happening to him!
I loved every minute I spent with this book and I'm about to be as annoying with it as I was with Hell Followed With Us, I'd apologize in advance but I'm not actually sorry about it.
Thank you to Peachtree Teen and Netgalley for granting me the opportunity to read and review this book.
Review edited to add: I rarely reread books but after hearing much good about the narration for the audiobook I decided to give it a go. The narrator was great but I really struggled to associate the voice with a teenager.
Alright, on with the review. White captures the small daily horrors of the autistic experience as well as the sweeping systemic ones and blends them masterfully with the supernatural, the result is raw, honest, and refreshing. While this book takes place in something akin to the Victorian era its commentary regarding ableism is shockingly and devastatingly timely. The pacing is a rather slow and steady one where the horror deepens through accumulation rather than outright shock. Silas is endearing as all effs and it makes the whole thing even harder to read because you just don't want bad things to be happening to him!
I loved every minute I spent with this book and I'm about to be as annoying with it as I was with Hell Followed With Us, I'd apologize in advance but I'm not actually sorry about it.
Thank you to Peachtree Teen and Netgalley for granting me the opportunity to read and review this book.
Review edited to add: I rarely reread books but after hearing much good about the narration for the audiobook I decided to give it a go. The narrator was great but I really struggled to associate the voice with a teenager.
Shelved as 'dnf'
September 11, 2024DNF 20%
Nie jestem odbiorcą tej książki, więc porzucam.
Nie jestem odbiorcą tej książki, więc porzucam.
November 23, 2023
When I tell ya'll that Andrew Joseph White does not fail me....I genuinely mean that. If you are interested in checking out more of my thoughts about this one, check out this video: https://youtu.be/DmTpBzWo-f0?si=90emB...
September 22, 2023
the best feral trans joy filled ending i coulda imagined 🥺
January 7, 2024
The way Andrew Joseph White destroys you in the best possible way... I will read whatever he decides to publish.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth blends historical fantasy and horror with a trans protagonist caught in the jaws of gendered expectations and misogyny in a truly horrifying way. Silas is a boy. An autistic boy who wants nothing more than to become a doctor and escape the constraints of expecting him to marry a man, become a wife, and bear children. Women are forbidden from practicing veil magic involving spirits and almost everyone thinks he is a woman. But just as freedom seems within his grasp, it's torn away and he is enrolled in an institution aimed at curing violet-eyed women with power who aren't conforming to what's expected of them. And those cures might range from psychological or physical abuse to medical experimentation in search of a solution.
While this is a fantasy, it is based on real historical practices and the way White writes scenes is visceral and graphic. That being said, while there are many horrific scenes, this isn't an unrelenting nightmare. There are moments of calm. Of affection and tenderness, of being seen. And there is ultimately resistance. It's a tough line to walk but I think this is perfectly done. It also thoughtfully explores misogyny, toxic masculinity, body dysmorphia, and how neurodivergence intersects with queer or trans identities in ways that complicate things. The word autism isn't used in the book because there wasn't a word for it during the Victorian era, but it's very clear that Silas is autistic and the author is also autistic and trans. I think it's so important to see this kind of representation and I'm glad there's more of it. Absolutely incredible book.
Content warnings include: sexual assault, physical violence, medical experimentation including torture and vivisection, body horror, graphic surgical abortion, panic attacks, disassociating, misogyny, transphobia, deadnaming, etc.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth blends historical fantasy and horror with a trans protagonist caught in the jaws of gendered expectations and misogyny in a truly horrifying way. Silas is a boy. An autistic boy who wants nothing more than to become a doctor and escape the constraints of expecting him to marry a man, become a wife, and bear children. Women are forbidden from practicing veil magic involving spirits and almost everyone thinks he is a woman. But just as freedom seems within his grasp, it's torn away and he is enrolled in an institution aimed at curing violet-eyed women with power who aren't conforming to what's expected of them. And those cures might range from psychological or physical abuse to medical experimentation in search of a solution.
While this is a fantasy, it is based on real historical practices and the way White writes scenes is visceral and graphic. That being said, while there are many horrific scenes, this isn't an unrelenting nightmare. There are moments of calm. Of affection and tenderness, of being seen. And there is ultimately resistance. It's a tough line to walk but I think this is perfectly done. It also thoughtfully explores misogyny, toxic masculinity, body dysmorphia, and how neurodivergence intersects with queer or trans identities in ways that complicate things. The word autism isn't used in the book because there wasn't a word for it during the Victorian era, but it's very clear that Silas is autistic and the author is also autistic and trans. I think it's so important to see this kind of representation and I'm glad there's more of it. Absolutely incredible book.
Content warnings include: sexual assault, physical violence, medical experimentation including torture and vivisection, body horror, graphic surgical abortion, panic attacks, disassociating, misogyny, transphobia, deadnaming, etc.
August 20, 2023
Who else has a little rabbit hiding in their chest? A rabbit that translates the fear that buries itself underneath the sternum beside the heart? The same rabbit that tries to convince you everyone is picking you to pieces? The rabbit that fuels your anxiety? That rabbit constantly talked to Silas in The Bares Its Teeth and it was so recognizable.
When I finished Hell Followed with Us, I said that even though that story would probably haunt me forever, I’d pick up anything Andrew Joseph White would write, even without reading the blurb. Well, I kind of read the blurb of his sophomore book but otherwise jumped in without knowing much more. There’s gore again. A lot of. A trans character but this time in 1883. And that beautiful writing.
This story fueled, at times, my anxiety and my nausea. I read the author’s note, and Andrew said I didn’t have to endure it. That I could get off the operating table and walk away at any time. And I thought I didn’t really have triggers. But I do. I have one. I’m not one for bloody things, and I have to look away if I see blood on tv or in a movie, especially if it’s an operation. There’s so much to love about this story, and I highlighted so many sentences. Andrew’s writing is one of the best I’ve ever seen. But I had to skip some parts. I got off the operating table sometimes, Andrew, because the medical horror was just too much for me. But I came back and gobbled up that beautiful story for a while. And then I got off again. And got back on again.
I still want to read anything Andrew writes in the future. I only hope that I can control my anxiety and nausea the next time.
I received an ARC from Peachtree Teen and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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When I finished Hell Followed with Us, I said that even though that story would probably haunt me forever, I’d pick up anything Andrew Joseph White would write, even without reading the blurb. Well, I kind of read the blurb of his sophomore book but otherwise jumped in without knowing much more. There’s gore again. A lot of. A trans character but this time in 1883. And that beautiful writing.
This story fueled, at times, my anxiety and my nausea. I read the author’s note, and Andrew said I didn’t have to endure it. That I could get off the operating table and walk away at any time. And I thought I didn’t really have triggers. But I do. I have one. I’m not one for bloody things, and I have to look away if I see blood on tv or in a movie, especially if it’s an operation. There’s so much to love about this story, and I highlighted so many sentences. Andrew’s writing is one of the best I’ve ever seen. But I had to skip some parts. I got off the operating table sometimes, Andrew, because the medical horror was just too much for me. But I came back and gobbled up that beautiful story for a while. And then I got off again. And got back on again.
I still want to read anything Andrew writes in the future. I only hope that I can control my anxiety and nausea the next time.
I received an ARC from Peachtree Teen and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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August 21, 2024
thank you netgalley <3 (i think the book is out now?)
✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
───※ ·❆· ※───
☾ this was an insanely good read, i had been meaning to pick up this guy's books for the longest time and now i have two on ebook and a physical with sprayed edges :D a new favourite author for sure
☾ i never get squeamish when reading books, but this one honestly got me in a few places with some descriptions, and i love it for that
☾ i loved these characters too, they were all so different and were suffering so weren't always 100% likeable, but they felt very real
☾ george is my opp if i see that man i am throwing hands directly at him
tw: dead naming and transphobia (in a victorian setting); misogyny; violence against women and trans people; descriptions of gore and make-shift surgeries w/o anesthesia. SA; pregnancy and miscarriage discussion
✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
───※ ·❆· ※───
☾ this was an insanely good read, i had been meaning to pick up this guy's books for the longest time and now i have two on ebook and a physical with sprayed edges :D a new favourite author for sure
☾ i never get squeamish when reading books, but this one honestly got me in a few places with some descriptions, and i love it for that
☾ i loved these characters too, they were all so different and were suffering so weren't always 100% likeable, but they felt very real
☾ george is my opp if i see that man i am throwing hands directly at him
tw: dead naming and transphobia (in a victorian setting); misogyny; violence against women and trans people; descriptions of gore and make-shift surgeries w/o anesthesia. SA; pregnancy and miscarriage discussion
June 7, 2024
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy3PRrtL4...
A riveting gothic novel that exposes the true to life horrors of systematic oppression and covered up injustices. With beguiling, atmospheric language that slowly builds discomfort and dread, this novel is not only an impactful ghost story, but an unfortunately recognizable social horror that can be found in contemporary lgbtq and feminist issues. From medical abuse to the personal and institutional ways that people are made to feel monstrous for living authentically, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a deeply relatable portrayal of fighting to live one’s truth amongst a society that will do anything to force people into premade boxes. Horror aside, this is also a love story; it is a tale of self love, of finding love and family in unexpected places, a love of pursuing passions and breaking free of past trauma. Sharp, honest, and a lore filled interpretation of a history that closely mirrors the present.
A riveting gothic novel that exposes the true to life horrors of systematic oppression and covered up injustices. With beguiling, atmospheric language that slowly builds discomfort and dread, this novel is not only an impactful ghost story, but an unfortunately recognizable social horror that can be found in contemporary lgbtq and feminist issues. From medical abuse to the personal and institutional ways that people are made to feel monstrous for living authentically, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a deeply relatable portrayal of fighting to live one’s truth amongst a society that will do anything to force people into premade boxes. Horror aside, this is also a love story; it is a tale of self love, of finding love and family in unexpected places, a love of pursuing passions and breaking free of past trauma. Sharp, honest, and a lore filled interpretation of a history that closely mirrors the present.
September 5, 2023
Star Rating: —> 5 Stars
Happy Release Day ( 09/05/2023 ) to this absolute masterpiece!!!
ARC Buddy read with my otp br partner & best friend, Darcey! Woo! Return of the Living… Book Bloggers? Lmfao love you sis! I’ve missed our brs SOMUCH!
HOLY SHHHH*T! I cannot even…words rn? I WILL say this was HORRIFYING, BADASS, HEARTBREAKING, MEANINGFUL, FEMINIST AF, CREEPY AF, and just oml suuucchhh a GREAT, PHENOMENAL READ, & a perf book to be a part of my spooky season kick off weekend!
When I can actually articulate a longer, more profound review (bc you best bet I have SO. MUCH. MORE. TO. SAY. about this incredible, incredible book !), I will be writing it asap—I’m still in that initial shock/ awe stage just phew!—RTC !
Another brilliant book, their sophomore novel, no less(!), written by the incredible Andrew Joseph White! They never fail to write incredible, terrifying, horror stories with profound insight into important topics, and do trans rep, autism rep/neurodivergent rep, & queer rep such amazing justice!
Thank you SO much to Peachtree Teen via NetGalley, & Andrew Joseph White for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Happy Release Day ( 09/05/2023 ) to this absolute masterpiece!!!
ARC Buddy read with my otp br partner & best friend, Darcey! Woo! Return of the Living… Book Bloggers? Lmfao love you sis! I’ve missed our brs SOMUCH!
HOLY SHHHH*T! I cannot even…words rn? I WILL say this was HORRIFYING, BADASS, HEARTBREAKING, MEANINGFUL, FEMINIST AF, CREEPY AF, and just oml suuucchhh a GREAT, PHENOMENAL READ, & a perf book to be a part of my spooky season kick off weekend!
When I can actually articulate a longer, more profound review (bc you best bet I have SO. MUCH. MORE. TO. SAY. about this incredible, incredible book !), I will be writing it asap—I’m still in that initial shock/ awe stage just phew!—RTC !
Another brilliant book, their sophomore novel, no less(!), written by the incredible Andrew Joseph White! They never fail to write incredible, terrifying, horror stories with profound insight into important topics, and do trans rep, autism rep/neurodivergent rep, & queer rep such amazing justice!
Thank you SO much to Peachtree Teen via NetGalley, & Andrew Joseph White for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Read
October 19, 2023"They can't keep scraping away layers of me thinking they can find the girl they want underneath. I'm not the dead flesh on top of a healing injury, devoured by maggots making way for the tender meat underneath to bloom."
Insightful and raw but also graphic and unsettling. This was not an easy book to read.
Insightful and raw but also graphic and unsettling. This was not an easy book to read.
December 19, 2023
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy3PRrtL4...
A riveting gothic novel that exposes the true to life horrors of systematic oppression and covered up injustices. With beguiling, atmospheric language that slowly builds discomfort and dread, this novel is not only an impactful ghost story, but an unfortunately recognizable social horror that can be found in contemporary lgbtq and feminist issues. From medical abuse to the personal and institutional ways that people are made to feel monstrous for living authentically, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a deeply relatable portrayal of fighting to live one’s truth amongst a society that will do anything to force people into premade boxes. Horror aside, this is also a love story; it is a tale of self love, of finding love and family in unexpected places, a love of pursuing passions and breaking free of past trauma. Sharp, honest, and a lore filled interpretation of a history that closely mirrors the present.
A riveting gothic novel that exposes the true to life horrors of systematic oppression and covered up injustices. With beguiling, atmospheric language that slowly builds discomfort and dread, this novel is not only an impactful ghost story, but an unfortunately recognizable social horror that can be found in contemporary lgbtq and feminist issues. From medical abuse to the personal and institutional ways that people are made to feel monstrous for living authentically, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a deeply relatable portrayal of fighting to live one’s truth amongst a society that will do anything to force people into premade boxes. Horror aside, this is also a love story; it is a tale of self love, of finding love and family in unexpected places, a love of pursuing passions and breaking free of past trauma. Sharp, honest, and a lore filled interpretation of a history that closely mirrors the present.
November 10, 2023
While slightly better than Hell Followed With Us, this still gets a frustrating 2.5 rating from me. Similar to his first novel, White has an interesting premise to work with in The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, but the execution was, once again, lacking.
First off, I do appreciate the representation in this book. Trans and autistic characters are still underrepresented in the media, and it's always great to see an own-voice book. Though I do hope that White also has more up his sleeve than trans/autistic main characters, because those are the exact same ones we got in his first novel. While I do get the desire to represent yourself and your life experience, I do hope that White expands his main character pool a bit, otherwise it could become a little boring to read about the same kind of main character in all of his books... Still, own-voices is always a plus, and I appreciate the representation work that's being done here.
However, I do take some issue with how Silas is being treated throughout the story. Yes, I fully understand that this novel is set in the 19th century, a time in which society still had a very harmful understanding of what it means to be anything other than a cishet man. But all the sh*t that happens to Silas throughout the book borderlines t*rture p*rn at some point. He is ab*sed (physically, emotionally, and s*xually) multiple times, he is being beaten and thrown about, quasi r*ped at least two times, constantly misgendered and mistreated by basically everyone around him; simply every horrible thing you could have someone experience in a YA story happens to Silas. There's almost never a moment where we just get to be with Silas as Silas. He's constantly perceived by everyone (except Daphne) as a girl, and everyone treats him accordingly. We never just get to be with him in the context of the scene and other characters as the man he is. We just know that's not the case because we know the other characters see him as a girl. Honestly, halfway through the book, I got "tired" of reading that Silas was ab*sed again, that someone misgendered him again, that someone touched him inappropriately again, etc. It was exhausting, and I didn't care for it by the end, it felt too excessive after a while. Down to the very end, this happens, literally 20 pages before the ending, Silas is s*xually ab*sed again, and I just didn't wanna see it anymore. I understand that it's important to show the reality of the suffering of trans people, but at the same time it would be nice if we just had some pleasant moments with Silas to balance out the awfulness.
Speaking of ab*use, literally every man in this book is evil. There's not a single (cis) man in this entire story who doesn't turn out to be a bad guy in some way, shape, or form. Even characters you thought were trustful and understanding turn into ab*sive wankers at the very end. I understand that this is supposed to show the systemic problem at work, but it honestly doesn't help if we just turn around and just say literally every single (cis) man is evil, there's no one who will treat Silas or the girls with honest respect. Only Silas is allowed to be the good kind of man because he's not like those other evil, cis men. That's literally how this reads sometimes. Silas understands, he's the good one because he's different, he might be a man, but he's not one of *those* men. There's very little introspection by Silas how his masculinity, in some way, originates from those men around him, how his masculinity is influenced and changed by the men in the society he lives in. Especially since Silas, under more realistic circumstances, wouldn't have such a clear, modern-day understanding of what it means to be a trans man, it would've been interesting to see Silas having to work through his learned understanding of masculinity and how he develops his own expression of masculinity.
Apropos modern-day understanding, Silas basically reads like a 21st-century teenager. For someone who grew up in the Victorian era in a society that's still very much based on binary gender stereotypes, Silas already has a quite remarkably clear and modern-day understanding of his own gender identity. He already knows he's a boy, he knows he's different compared to the girls in the asylum, he knows that he's not like those evil cis men, he simply already has a very clear understanding of his identity from the very beginning. That simply wouldn't have been the case for a Victorian teenager. There's no development, no progression during which Silas has to confront his understanding of gender or has to work through how he feels different to thr girls but also is not exactly like those cis men around him.
In general, the historical aspect of the novel is more set dressing than an actual setting which is explored in detail. Silas has modern-day understandings, and that's only one of the problems. There are some basic aspects within this book that White could've easily researched to avoid simple mistakes. The best example is how corsets are being used, yet again, as a symbol to show how women are being restricted. I'm tired of people thinking that corsets were like some evil, health-risking piece of clothing that tortured women across history. That is simply not the case. Corsets were a support garment and, in some ways, were even similar to binders! There were corsets that could reduce breast size, and not all corsets were there for giving you the tiniest of waistlines or made breathing impossible. I thought we were past this old misconception, but apparently, we aren't. Another, more minor, thing were the titles of the Luckenbill family. A Viscount is not the same as a Lord. If you're, for example, Mr. Smith, your viscount title is not Viscount Smith. A Viscount, similar to a Duke, holds a domain, a viscountry. A Viscount title can be a place name, surname, or a combination. So Mr. Smith would be John Smith, 3rd Viscount Cross. That is some really simple stuff the author could've researched with a simple Google search, and yet it is small mistakes like those that show that not enough research has gone into the book.
Let's talk characters. While Silas is an improvement over Benji from Hell Followed With Us, he is still too flat of a character for me. Silas is trans, autistic and a "surgeon"; that's it, those are his three character traits and, oh boy, will they be repeated over and over again in every single chapter because there's nothing else to Silas. Somehow, he considers himself a full-on surgeon at age 16 without having studied medicine. He will constantly make medical references, and while I understand how that perception is connected to his autism, was there literally nothing else Silas was interested in?! It also felt kinda off how Silas' autism was only ever explored on a behavioural level. Obviously, I wouldn't know since I don't have autism, but it felt a bit one-note how his autism was portrayed, and I wish more aspects of it had been shown. I appreciate the representation work that's being done here, but representation is not enough. Yes, I love reading about a trans autistic character, but there has to be more to a character than just the representation aspect. Being queer is not a personality trait, and I want to know more about Silas than just his struggles with being queer. Related to that, I also didn't like how Silas suddenly and immediately fell in love with Daphne the moment he realised she was trans too. Like, I get it, it's the 1st time you met someone who's like you. But her being trans does not make her anymore interesting or kinder as a person. She's still the same person, she just happens to also be trans. But Silas acts like her being trans is literally the reason why he falls in love with her, and that felt kind of weird. Also, I love how Silas hates that his brother George does certain things for his wife, who George has been married for 2 years and who went through a traumatic event, but then immediately falls in love with a person he's met two times.
About the girls I can't even say that much because there were way too many of them without enough character traits, so at some point, I gave up on trying to keep up with who is who. There's the shy one, the b*tchy one, the pregnant one, the quiet one etc. They all just have one character trait to define them by, and that's it. I didn't really care who was who, and only one or two of the girls at the hospital stood out to me. It also didn't sit quite right with me how Silas saw some of those girls without ever questioning why they are that way. There were one or two female characters who upheld the system and would usually support the abusive system being held in place. To them Silas literally says "f*ck them" without ever stopping to understand that those women, while part of the problem, are also very much controlled and abused by that very system they're all trapped in. It felt very insensitive, considering that Silas was supposed to have this super modern and respectful understanding of feminism and patriarchy.
The antagonists I also can't say much about because they're all just evil men who are moustache twirling villains that abuse every female-coded person in sight. There wasn't any depth to any of the antagonists, they were all just ab*usive wankers for the sake of being evil and they all hated women because of course they did. There was no personality to them, it was all just one pile of horribleness.
In regards to the story. While it wasn't terribly bad, I had the same problems here that I did when I read Hell Followed With Us. The premise is super interesting, and the opening chapters are engaging, but then the book just grinds to a massive hold for several hundred pages, only to be very quickly interrupted by short and way too fast moments of action/horror. For the most part, the story meanders around, Silas has interactions with the girls, is ab*sed, thinks about being trans... then for 10 pages, something interesting would suddenly happen, and then the book goes back to being unengaging for 100 pages. Also, there's not enough ghost fantasy in this ghost fantasy book. The Veil itself and the powers surrounding it are barely explored at all, which is quite disappointing. Sure there are some ghosts and the Veil is opened like once or twice, but we never really find out anything about what the Veil is, how the ghosts work, what kinds of powers the Veil can give you or how the afterlife in this setting work. It's all very vague, and I was kinda disappointed by how little fantasy ended up being in this fantasy novel.
Honestly, I can absolutely see how great this book could be to others. For me, there are simply too many small mistakes and inconsistencies that are impossible to ignore at some point. The premise of this book was great, so I was all the more disappointed when, yet again, White comes up with a rather unimaginative and flay story that sounds better in my head than it actually takes place in the book. I adore own-voices books, and I appreciate the representation, but that is not enough! I will not simply give a book high praises because it features queer and neurodivergent characters, I also want to see an engaging story and characters that are more than their queerness. I wanna give White the benefit of the doubt because he does have talent, but I'm at a point where I'm realising that maybe White's stories simply aren't for me.
First off, I do appreciate the representation in this book. Trans and autistic characters are still underrepresented in the media, and it's always great to see an own-voice book. Though I do hope that White also has more up his sleeve than trans/autistic main characters, because those are the exact same ones we got in his first novel. While I do get the desire to represent yourself and your life experience, I do hope that White expands his main character pool a bit, otherwise it could become a little boring to read about the same kind of main character in all of his books... Still, own-voices is always a plus, and I appreciate the representation work that's being done here.
However, I do take some issue with how Silas is being treated throughout the story. Yes, I fully understand that this novel is set in the 19th century, a time in which society still had a very harmful understanding of what it means to be anything other than a cishet man. But all the sh*t that happens to Silas throughout the book borderlines t*rture p*rn at some point. He is ab*sed (physically, emotionally, and s*xually) multiple times, he is being beaten and thrown about, quasi r*ped at least two times, constantly misgendered and mistreated by basically everyone around him; simply every horrible thing you could have someone experience in a YA story happens to Silas. There's almost never a moment where we just get to be with Silas as Silas. He's constantly perceived by everyone (except Daphne) as a girl, and everyone treats him accordingly. We never just get to be with him in the context of the scene and other characters as the man he is. We just know that's not the case because we know the other characters see him as a girl. Honestly, halfway through the book, I got "tired" of reading that Silas was ab*sed again, that someone misgendered him again, that someone touched him inappropriately again, etc. It was exhausting, and I didn't care for it by the end, it felt too excessive after a while. Down to the very end, this happens, literally 20 pages before the ending, Silas is s*xually ab*sed again, and I just didn't wanna see it anymore. I understand that it's important to show the reality of the suffering of trans people, but at the same time it would be nice if we just had some pleasant moments with Silas to balance out the awfulness.
Speaking of ab*use, literally every man in this book is evil. There's not a single (cis) man in this entire story who doesn't turn out to be a bad guy in some way, shape, or form. Even characters you thought were trustful and understanding turn into ab*sive wankers at the very end. I understand that this is supposed to show the systemic problem at work, but it honestly doesn't help if we just turn around and just say literally every single (cis) man is evil, there's no one who will treat Silas or the girls with honest respect. Only Silas is allowed to be the good kind of man because he's not like those other evil, cis men. That's literally how this reads sometimes. Silas understands, he's the good one because he's different, he might be a man, but he's not one of *those* men. There's very little introspection by Silas how his masculinity, in some way, originates from those men around him, how his masculinity is influenced and changed by the men in the society he lives in. Especially since Silas, under more realistic circumstances, wouldn't have such a clear, modern-day understanding of what it means to be a trans man, it would've been interesting to see Silas having to work through his learned understanding of masculinity and how he develops his own expression of masculinity.
Apropos modern-day understanding, Silas basically reads like a 21st-century teenager. For someone who grew up in the Victorian era in a society that's still very much based on binary gender stereotypes, Silas already has a quite remarkably clear and modern-day understanding of his own gender identity. He already knows he's a boy, he knows he's different compared to the girls in the asylum, he knows that he's not like those evil cis men, he simply already has a very clear understanding of his identity from the very beginning. That simply wouldn't have been the case for a Victorian teenager. There's no development, no progression during which Silas has to confront his understanding of gender or has to work through how he feels different to thr girls but also is not exactly like those cis men around him.
In general, the historical aspect of the novel is more set dressing than an actual setting which is explored in detail. Silas has modern-day understandings, and that's only one of the problems. There are some basic aspects within this book that White could've easily researched to avoid simple mistakes. The best example is how corsets are being used, yet again, as a symbol to show how women are being restricted. I'm tired of people thinking that corsets were like some evil, health-risking piece of clothing that tortured women across history. That is simply not the case. Corsets were a support garment and, in some ways, were even similar to binders! There were corsets that could reduce breast size, and not all corsets were there for giving you the tiniest of waistlines or made breathing impossible. I thought we were past this old misconception, but apparently, we aren't. Another, more minor, thing were the titles of the Luckenbill family. A Viscount is not the same as a Lord. If you're, for example, Mr. Smith, your viscount title is not Viscount Smith. A Viscount, similar to a Duke, holds a domain, a viscountry. A Viscount title can be a place name, surname, or a combination. So Mr. Smith would be John Smith, 3rd Viscount Cross. That is some really simple stuff the author could've researched with a simple Google search, and yet it is small mistakes like those that show that not enough research has gone into the book.
Let's talk characters. While Silas is an improvement over Benji from Hell Followed With Us, he is still too flat of a character for me. Silas is trans, autistic and a "surgeon"; that's it, those are his three character traits and, oh boy, will they be repeated over and over again in every single chapter because there's nothing else to Silas. Somehow, he considers himself a full-on surgeon at age 16 without having studied medicine. He will constantly make medical references, and while I understand how that perception is connected to his autism, was there literally nothing else Silas was interested in?! It also felt kinda off how Silas' autism was only ever explored on a behavioural level. Obviously, I wouldn't know since I don't have autism, but it felt a bit one-note how his autism was portrayed, and I wish more aspects of it had been shown. I appreciate the representation work that's being done here, but representation is not enough. Yes, I love reading about a trans autistic character, but there has to be more to a character than just the representation aspect. Being queer is not a personality trait, and I want to know more about Silas than just his struggles with being queer. Related to that, I also didn't like how Silas suddenly and immediately fell in love with Daphne the moment he realised she was trans too. Like, I get it, it's the 1st time you met someone who's like you. But her being trans does not make her anymore interesting or kinder as a person. She's still the same person, she just happens to also be trans. But Silas acts like her being trans is literally the reason why he falls in love with her, and that felt kind of weird. Also, I love how Silas hates that his brother George does certain things for his wife, who George has been married for 2 years and who went through a traumatic event, but then immediately falls in love with a person he's met two times.
About the girls I can't even say that much because there were way too many of them without enough character traits, so at some point, I gave up on trying to keep up with who is who. There's the shy one, the b*tchy one, the pregnant one, the quiet one etc. They all just have one character trait to define them by, and that's it. I didn't really care who was who, and only one or two of the girls at the hospital stood out to me. It also didn't sit quite right with me how Silas saw some of those girls without ever questioning why they are that way. There were one or two female characters who upheld the system and would usually support the abusive system being held in place. To them Silas literally says "f*ck them" without ever stopping to understand that those women, while part of the problem, are also very much controlled and abused by that very system they're all trapped in. It felt very insensitive, considering that Silas was supposed to have this super modern and respectful understanding of feminism and patriarchy.
The antagonists I also can't say much about because they're all just evil men who are moustache twirling villains that abuse every female-coded person in sight. There wasn't any depth to any of the antagonists, they were all just ab*usive wankers for the sake of being evil and they all hated women because of course they did. There was no personality to them, it was all just one pile of horribleness.
In regards to the story. While it wasn't terribly bad, I had the same problems here that I did when I read Hell Followed With Us. The premise is super interesting, and the opening chapters are engaging, but then the book just grinds to a massive hold for several hundred pages, only to be very quickly interrupted by short and way too fast moments of action/horror. For the most part, the story meanders around, Silas has interactions with the girls, is ab*sed, thinks about being trans... then for 10 pages, something interesting would suddenly happen, and then the book goes back to being unengaging for 100 pages. Also, there's not enough ghost fantasy in this ghost fantasy book. The Veil itself and the powers surrounding it are barely explored at all, which is quite disappointing. Sure there are some ghosts and the Veil is opened like once or twice, but we never really find out anything about what the Veil is, how the ghosts work, what kinds of powers the Veil can give you or how the afterlife in this setting work. It's all very vague, and I was kinda disappointed by how little fantasy ended up being in this fantasy novel.
Honestly, I can absolutely see how great this book could be to others. For me, there are simply too many small mistakes and inconsistencies that are impossible to ignore at some point. The premise of this book was great, so I was all the more disappointed when, yet again, White comes up with a rather unimaginative and flay story that sounds better in my head than it actually takes place in the book. I adore own-voices books, and I appreciate the representation, but that is not enough! I will not simply give a book high praises because it features queer and neurodivergent characters, I also want to see an engaging story and characters that are more than their queerness. I wanna give White the benefit of the doubt because he does have talent, but I'm at a point where I'm realising that maybe White's stories simply aren't for me.
September 22, 2024
feral, blood-soaked, nauseating, triumphant. I'm reeling. I think I'm in shock.
April 7, 2024
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was amazing and is now one of my favourite reads of the year. I don't read much horror, but I now need to get some more onto my tbr, starting with Hell Followed With Us.
July 26, 2024
When the dead men come, we are waiting. We have been waiting so long. They must have convinced themselves they would never rot in the same dirt we do.
Yeah...yeah.
This had all the elements to be something I not only disliked, but despised. First person narration? Queer suffering and torture? Body horror and gore? No thanks.
And yet... And yet. [points at five-star rating]
This was a gripping, visceral read. Once I got past the first 20% I literally could not put it down. Not only is the concept fascinating, not only is the writing captivating and the horror cathartic, but under the layers of terror and misery, the biggest underlying theme is one of the things I care most about in queer literature: an incredible sense of compassion, understanding and allegiance between people victimised by an oppressive system. Despite their differences and the inherent antagonism of the societal structure they are forced in, there is not one occasion where Silas shows contempt to the girls, not even the ones who are outright cruel to him. The entire time he is forced to live as a woman, he shows nothing but empathy, compassion, and understanding for the girls around him, their struggles and traumas, the horrible things their society puts them all through for the sole reason of being, or being perceived as, women. For bad or for worse, they are in it together, always.
The last 10%, starting right after the climax, had me question the pacing, but it was ultimately... a necessary tail end. The tension dwindles before rising again, and structure-wise I find it does not really work, but it delivers what could possibly be the most important message: you do not trust the oppressor. There is NO queer liberation to be found in complying with or submitting to an establishment designed to erase you. Queer solidarity is the only way out.
Happy Pride month folks, read this book (but heed the trigger warnings!).
Yeah...yeah.
This had all the elements to be something I not only disliked, but despised. First person narration? Queer suffering and torture? Body horror and gore? No thanks.
And yet... And yet. [points at five-star rating]
This was a gripping, visceral read. Once I got past the first 20% I literally could not put it down. Not only is the concept fascinating, not only is the writing captivating and the horror cathartic, but under the layers of terror and misery, the biggest underlying theme is one of the things I care most about in queer literature: an incredible sense of compassion, understanding and allegiance between people victimised by an oppressive system. Despite their differences and the inherent antagonism of the societal structure they are forced in, there is not one occasion where Silas shows contempt to the girls, not even the ones who are outright cruel to him. The entire time he is forced to live as a woman, he shows nothing but empathy, compassion, and understanding for the girls around him, their struggles and traumas, the horrible things their society puts them all through for the sole reason of being, or being perceived as, women. For bad or for worse, they are in it together, always.
The last 10%, starting right after the climax, had me question the pacing, but it was ultimately... a necessary tail end. The tension dwindles before rising again, and structure-wise I find it does not really work, but it delivers what could possibly be the most important message: you do not trust the oppressor. There is NO queer liberation to be found in complying with or submitting to an establishment designed to erase you. Queer solidarity is the only way out.
Happy Pride month folks, read this book (but heed the trigger warnings!).
December 14, 2023
This was so deliciously good, I devoured this, genuinely just couldn’t put it down until I was finished. Now excuse me while I go and read everything Andrew Joseph White has ever written.
Speaking of the writing,
Also Silas and Daphne?!
Speaking of the writing,
Literal CHILLS.
“I tell Ellen there has to be someone who will listen if we scream loud enough.
But can we do it before we burn?
If a dead girl prays to God can he hear her?”
“There’s a difference between horrible things that have gone on forever, because you can almost convince yourself of the inevitability of an age-old cruelty, or almost its necessity. But not a new one. With a new one, the change is too great, the wound too new, and you cannot convince yourself that it is simply the way of the world.”
Also Silas and Daphne?!
“In the span of seconds, standing there in a suit with her cheeks flushing the color of roses and her eyes brimming with tears, the Honorable Daphne Luckenbill becomes the most wonderful girl I have ever seen.”They have have my whole heart <3<3
September 12, 2023
i just don't think andrew's YA stuff is for me. i will give his adult book another go once that's published but other than that his writing and story telling just doesn't work for me, you lot enjoy though
read as part of 202-Queer 🌈✨
read as part of 202-Queer 🌈✨
Read
April 22, 2023Hey y'all, author here with the content warnings for THE SPIRIT BARES ITS TEETH.
THE SPIRIT BARES ITS TEETH is a book about misogyny, transphobia, and ableism from the perspective of an autistic transgender boy. It has a thematic focus on the violent enforcement of gender roles and Victorian-era psychiatry as tools of oppression. The book means a lot to me, but it is not a fun or easy read.
Content Warnings
* Graphic violence
* Sexual assault - implied, attempted, and on-page
* Medical gore, including an on-page Cesarean section
* Transphobia (explicit misgendering, dead-naming, transphobic violence/conversion therapy)
* Anti-autistic ableism
* Medical/psychiatric abuse, including dubious diagnosis and treatment
* Gaslighting and abuse
* Minor discussions of miscarriage
These content warnings can also be found on my website with a more general version included in the author's note at the beginning of the book.
If you've read the book and believe anything else should be included here, please do not hesitate to contact me.
THE SPIRIT BARES ITS TEETH is a book about misogyny, transphobia, and ableism from the perspective of an autistic transgender boy. It has a thematic focus on the violent enforcement of gender roles and Victorian-era psychiatry as tools of oppression. The book means a lot to me, but it is not a fun or easy read.
Content Warnings
* Graphic violence
* Sexual assault - implied, attempted, and on-page
* Medical gore, including an on-page Cesarean section
* Transphobia (explicit misgendering, dead-naming, transphobic violence/conversion therapy)
* Anti-autistic ableism
* Medical/psychiatric abuse, including dubious diagnosis and treatment
* Gaslighting and abuse
* Minor discussions of miscarriage
These content warnings can also be found on my website with a more general version included in the author's note at the beginning of the book.
If you've read the book and believe anything else should be included here, please do not hesitate to contact me.
October 16, 2023
the folks were right, it is better than hell followed with us. silas and daphne's t4t relationship is so precious to me
October 9, 2023
I just read The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White and here is what I thought about it:
I am having a difficult time finding the words to adequately talk about my thoughts and feelings surrounding this book, but I will do my best. Before I give my thoughts, I’ll share a brief summary. We follow our main character Silas after he is diagnosed with vile-sickness (a condition that is said to affect violet-eyed women) after he fails to escape an arranged marriage. He is enrolled at Braxton’s Sanatorium and Finishing School to learn how to become a perfect wife and we quickly realize that there is something very wrong about this place and girls have been going missing without explanation.
The premise of the book is compelling on its own, but it is also supported by a very strongly constructed main character in Silas. His deductive and emotional thought process are so vicarial I felt very worried for him in a way I don’t often get emotionally attached to characters. There was an incredible balance of internal and external stakes present in this book and on top of all that this book was actually scary. I felt deeply disturbed and uncomfortable by the atmosphere and descriptions in this book—it was very truly a horror experience, but much more emotional in its horror than most I’ve read in the past. I would recommend checking content warnings because this book delicately deals with very real and visceral issues surrounding transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and sexism as it exists in a patriarchal and capitalist society. The author very explicitly and rightfully talks about how the horror and history of this book, even though it is written into a fantasy setting, was and is still very real and I appreciated those situating comments. The effect was a truly scary experience. I cried, I felt disturbed, and I empathized. What more could you want from this kind of story.
I did struggle with the book on a more technical level at times. I think the story can get a bit caught up in the magic system that felt a little underbaked and the pacing of the book towards the end felt a bit rushed. I was hoping for more careful payoff of threads that seemed very meticulously set up at the beginning. Additionally, the there was something a bit uncanny regarding Silas’s skills related to medical surgery that I do not think the book incorporated well into the logic of the story, as much as I understand how it is supposed to add to the story thematically. I couldn’t ever really get used to it—and maybe that’s on me.
Overall, I recommend this book to those that can stomach it and even to those that can’t if you can manage the content. It’s doing important work.
Happy reading.
4/5
I am having a difficult time finding the words to adequately talk about my thoughts and feelings surrounding this book, but I will do my best. Before I give my thoughts, I’ll share a brief summary. We follow our main character Silas after he is diagnosed with vile-sickness (a condition that is said to affect violet-eyed women) after he fails to escape an arranged marriage. He is enrolled at Braxton’s Sanatorium and Finishing School to learn how to become a perfect wife and we quickly realize that there is something very wrong about this place and girls have been going missing without explanation.
The premise of the book is compelling on its own, but it is also supported by a very strongly constructed main character in Silas. His deductive and emotional thought process are so vicarial I felt very worried for him in a way I don’t often get emotionally attached to characters. There was an incredible balance of internal and external stakes present in this book and on top of all that this book was actually scary. I felt deeply disturbed and uncomfortable by the atmosphere and descriptions in this book—it was very truly a horror experience, but much more emotional in its horror than most I’ve read in the past. I would recommend checking content warnings because this book delicately deals with very real and visceral issues surrounding transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and sexism as it exists in a patriarchal and capitalist society. The author very explicitly and rightfully talks about how the horror and history of this book, even though it is written into a fantasy setting, was and is still very real and I appreciated those situating comments. The effect was a truly scary experience. I cried, I felt disturbed, and I empathized. What more could you want from this kind of story.
I did struggle with the book on a more technical level at times. I think the story can get a bit caught up in the magic system that felt a little underbaked and the pacing of the book towards the end felt a bit rushed. I was hoping for more careful payoff of threads that seemed very meticulously set up at the beginning. Additionally, the there was something a bit uncanny regarding Silas’s skills related to medical surgery that I do not think the book incorporated well into the logic of the story, as much as I understand how it is supposed to add to the story thematically. I couldn’t ever really get used to it—and maybe that’s on me.
Overall, I recommend this book to those that can stomach it and even to those that can’t if you can manage the content. It’s doing important work.
Happy reading.
4/5
June 29, 2024
Received an arc from NetGalley, thanks!
If a dead girl prays to God can he hear her?
tw // transphobia, ableism, graphic violence, sexual assault, discussions of forced pregnancy and miscarriage, mentions of suicidal ideation, extensive medical gore
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth picked up a pair of silver scissor and thrusted them into my body, leaving a mush of muscles and bones behind barely recognizable as me.
There are no longer words. I surely don't have them. I cannot even begin to describe what I felt while reading, how Silas's story grabbed me by a hand since the page one, and how his hand was moving deeper and deeper into my flesh and ribs until it found it and mercilessly grabbed this beating heart. It. Is. Marvelous.
The horror? Indescribable. The tension? Unbreakable. The story? Fucking wild. Good isn't the word, bad is. How wrong it is, how uncomfortable with this evil waiting under its surface. AJW is a genius when it comes to sending reader way down into darkness of a world deprived of light, just to shine a dim of hope upon them. It breaks you. And yet you cannot leave. You don't want to leave.
I am well aware it is unhinged, feral and untamed book that is not for everyone. It never was meant to be. It won't be praised by most, but that's what makes the very core of it. TSBIT does not choose simplifications. It does not agree to exist as anything but this.
And I fucking loved every shard of glass it thrusted into me.
If this is AJW's young adult version of horror, I am terrified of the twisted adult tale he's preparing. Cannot wait for it.
BUMOING CAUSE IT'S PUBLICATION DAY BABYYY
If a dead girl prays to God can he hear her?
tw // transphobia, ableism, graphic violence, sexual assault, discussions of forced pregnancy and miscarriage, mentions of suicidal ideation, extensive medical gore
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth picked up a pair of silver scissor and thrusted them into my body, leaving a mush of muscles and bones behind barely recognizable as me.
There are no longer words. I surely don't have them. I cannot even begin to describe what I felt while reading, how Silas's story grabbed me by a hand since the page one, and how his hand was moving deeper and deeper into my flesh and ribs until it found it and mercilessly grabbed this beating heart. It. Is. Marvelous.
The horror? Indescribable. The tension? Unbreakable. The story? Fucking wild. Good isn't the word, bad is. How wrong it is, how uncomfortable with this evil waiting under its surface. AJW is a genius when it comes to sending reader way down into darkness of a world deprived of light, just to shine a dim of hope upon them. It breaks you. And yet you cannot leave. You don't want to leave.
I am well aware it is unhinged, feral and untamed book that is not for everyone. It never was meant to be. It won't be praised by most, but that's what makes the very core of it. TSBIT does not choose simplifications. It does not agree to exist as anything but this.
And I fucking loved every shard of glass it thrusted into me.
If this is AJW's young adult version of horror, I am terrified of the twisted adult tale he's preparing. Cannot wait for it.
BUMOING CAUSE IT'S PUBLICATION DAY BABYYY
November 28, 2023
Rating: 4.5 stars
this book was AMAZING. trans autistic rep??? set in historical times??? with horror??? i never thought I'd need all of those things together, but this book made it so enjoyable. def recommend
this book was AMAZING. trans autistic rep??? set in historical times??? with horror??? i never thought I'd need all of those things together, but this book made it so enjoyable. def recommend
May 4, 2024
Outstanding.
“Our mouths can no longer make words our throats cannot make sound but still we reach out.
The living are so warm.
Have you seen what has been done to us? Do you understand? Do you feel it the way we felt it? Please say you do please”
This book was great; the characters, the concepts and magic system, the ambiance, but above all the writing.
“That is not self-betrayal. That is self-preservation.”
Being in Silas head this whole time and hearing all his thoughts about not only his own identity but women in general, and his interactions with the girls ended up being one of the best showcases about girlhood I’ve ever read. So thank you Andrew, for this.
“ I love women as men are expected to, but the way only one who has ever experienced womanhood can.”
I won’t write down a whole essay about the kinship between women and trans men cause this is just a quick silly review, but I think he put it into words so beautifully: having experienced what womanhood is, performed, imposed, knowing what it’s like to have the world see you this way, makes them have a level of empathy that cannot be learned any other way but by having been at the receiving end of this bullshit.
At the end of the day, we all know who the real enemy is. Cis men. Mostly from England.
Silas
“How is that fair? How am I a bad person for not knowing things? I was a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I didn’t understand.”
Ellen when someone else could leave before her
Silas as soon as Daphne introduces herself
“Or maybe I’m just confusing love with comfort, and I’m okay with that. Is there any difference between love and a safe harbor from a storm? Should there be?”
George when asked about his involvement
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Every adult here
“My reflection is not my own. It is more a sculpture, an artist’s creation, than something that actually exists. It is something my parents would have commissioned to replace me.”
When the victim becomes an abuser by proxy, the current victim does now owe them understanding nor patience
Silas finally getting to pull out some eyes
Read this, please.
“Our mouths can no longer make words our throats cannot make sound but still we reach out.
The living are so warm.
Have you seen what has been done to us? Do you understand? Do you feel it the way we felt it? Please say you do please”
This book was great; the characters, the concepts and magic system, the ambiance, but above all the writing.
“That is not self-betrayal. That is self-preservation.”
Being in Silas head this whole time and hearing all his thoughts about not only his own identity but women in general, and his interactions with the girls ended up being one of the best showcases about girlhood I’ve ever read. So thank you Andrew, for this.
“ I love women as men are expected to, but the way only one who has ever experienced womanhood can.”
I won’t write down a whole essay about the kinship between women and trans men cause this is just a quick silly review, but I think he put it into words so beautifully: having experienced what womanhood is, performed, imposed, knowing what it’s like to have the world see you this way, makes them have a level of empathy that cannot be learned any other way but by having been at the receiving end of this bullshit.
At the end of the day, we all know who the real enemy is. Cis men. Mostly from England.
Silas
“How is that fair? How am I a bad person for not knowing things? I was a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I didn’t understand.”
Ellen when someone else could leave before her
Silas as soon as Daphne introduces herself
“Or maybe I’m just confusing love with comfort, and I’m okay with that. Is there any difference between love and a safe harbor from a storm? Should there be?”
George when asked about his involvement
[image error]
Every adult here
“My reflection is not my own. It is more a sculpture, an artist’s creation, than something that actually exists. It is something my parents would have commissioned to replace me.”
When the victim becomes an abuser by proxy, the current victim does now owe them understanding nor patience
Silas finally getting to pull out some eyes
Read this, please.
July 8, 2023
I don't want to say this book was bad. This book was not bad! But I simply did not like it at all.
The biggest strength here is the concept. Spiritualism and eugenics lend themselves well to horror and pair well together, and White has done an admirable job of integrating those concepts into a believable world, though the supernatural elements are underused. But like a lot of historical fiction, there's a pervasive sense of moral pedantry that impedes that believability. White insists we know that our narrator Silas is improbably aware and critical of everything from British imperialism to Victorian medical hygiene practices, as if we the audience would hold it against him if he held any opinions that would be remotely plausible for a child of the 1880s British upper class. Maybe that's something that other people enjoy, but to me it felt like a shallow reckoning with historical injustice, and it left me rolling my eyes.
Also eye-roll worthy: most of the characters. I'll credit White that every member of the (unnecessarily large, IMO) ensemble cast is distinct and memorable. But they're all so one-dimensional that it's hard to feel any attachment to them, and the relationships between them feel strangely unreal, like children's toys that are now fighting, now in love, now fighting again. The only character I found remotely compelling was Mary, who floats around being vaguely antagonistic (which I enjoyed) before suddenly lurching towards plot relevance in the last act.
Overall, this was a quick and easy read with a cool concept and very uneven execution. Reminded me (not necessarily unfavorably) of other books I've enjoyed, like Molly Tanzer's Diabolist series and Libba Bray's Diviners.
PS thnx netgalley! Sorry I keep picking books that I don't like!
The biggest strength here is the concept. Spiritualism and eugenics lend themselves well to horror and pair well together, and White has done an admirable job of integrating those concepts into a believable world, though the supernatural elements are underused. But like a lot of historical fiction, there's a pervasive sense of moral pedantry that impedes that believability. White insists we know that our narrator Silas is improbably aware and critical of everything from British imperialism to Victorian medical hygiene practices, as if we the audience would hold it against him if he held any opinions that would be remotely plausible for a child of the 1880s British upper class. Maybe that's something that other people enjoy, but to me it felt like a shallow reckoning with historical injustice, and it left me rolling my eyes.
Also eye-roll worthy: most of the characters. I'll credit White that every member of the (unnecessarily large, IMO) ensemble cast is distinct and memorable. But they're all so one-dimensional that it's hard to feel any attachment to them, and the relationships between them feel strangely unreal, like children's toys that are now fighting, now in love, now fighting again. The only character I found remotely compelling was Mary, who floats around being vaguely antagonistic (which I enjoyed) before suddenly lurching towards plot relevance in the last act.
Overall, this was a quick and easy read with a cool concept and very uneven execution. Reminded me (not necessarily unfavorably) of other books I've enjoyed, like Molly Tanzer's Diabolist series and Libba Bray's Diviners.
PS thnx netgalley! Sorry I keep picking books that I don't like!
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