Review by radiating_jackalope - The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

radiating_jackalope 's review for:

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

4.0

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is set in an alternate reality in which the British Empire bases its global power primarily on its ability to control the spirits of the dead. Not everyone can do this; the gift is innate and random, and those who possess it have purple eyes. Silas Bell is one of these people, but due to discriminatory structures, he is sent to a special boarding school to correct his tics and his trans identity.

Emotionally, this book is 5 out of 5 stars. The representation of autism, OCD (?), and being transgender is very well done. I also really liked the writing style.

At the same time, I realize that I am slowly outgrowing the young adult genre, because here, too, the romance felt more forced than natural. Especially since the two love interests fall in love really quickly.

Another point is that if I hear one more time that corsets were laced so tightly that they crushed organs in the body, I will throw the book against a wall. White does mention that he took creative and historical liberties, and the practice fits into the worldbuilding, since the book is also a “horror” book, but still. I'm really tired of this trope.

In addition, Silas has a historical role model, the physician and doctor James Berry, whom historians suspect may have been a trans man. As someone who has studied the real James Berry in depth, I can say that, as always, the reality is much more complex, and to this day it cannot be determined with certainty whether James Berry was really a trans man or actually “just” a cis woman who lived as a man in order to fulfill her dream (namely, to be a doctor, which was impossible in her time).

Furthermore, I would have liked to see more of the worldbuilding... I would have been particularly interested in the system of learning to control spirits or how the system works in the British colonies. This is mainly because at the end of the book it is mentioned that only Great Britain has this “Speaker” system. All other kingdoms in Europe seem to lack this system, which, in the context of the book, makes it seem as if British colonialism was the “worst.” Which, of course, is not true. Human suffering should never be compared or weighed against each other.

All in all, I would still recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a modern horror gothic novel set in Victorian England. Just be aware that Silas has a monotropism for anatomy, so if you have issues with medical contexts and very detailed gore, you might wanna skip this book.

Content Warnings