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eggcatsreads 's review for:
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
by Andrew Joseph White
A huge thank you to NetGalley and Holiday House/Peachtree/Pixel+Ink/Peachtree Teen for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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Trigger Warnings:
- Transphobia
- Ableism
- Sexual assault
- Gore; medical gore; explicit mentions of performing a cesarean section and removing the uterus
- Pregnancy
- Miscarriage
- Violence
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“There’s a difference between weakness and survival.”
This book is a wonder. It’s bloody, and violent, and freeing. It lets you be yourself, guts and all, and doesn’t shy away from honesty and being true to oneself.
Our main character Silas (“Gloria”) is trapped by convention to be nothing more than a wife to produce (male) children. Despite his interest in anatomy and becoming a surgeon, and absolutely no interest in being a wife or a woman at all. However, when he tries to break away from the life forced on him, he’s caught and sent to a kind of finishing school to turn “women” like him into perfect wives - or else. This is a great setting for a gothic horror. Our main character is trapped, with no or very few allies, and must do whatever he can to save himself before it’s too late.
The society clearly takes its inspiration from the spiritualist movement of the early 1800s. (I personally just want to mention this because this era is so fascinating to me, and I almost love every novel I’ve read that takes direct inspiration from it.) I thought it was interesting that originally women were the ones doing the medium work, but once it was discovered how to use the power for war and money women were banned from doing it - or risk becoming ill. And this begs the question - is this “Veil-sickness” real, or is it manufactured to ensure compliance?
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I thought the worldbuilding for the setting was phenomenal - it’s not just simply info-dumping at us. Concepts that we learn more about as the novel progresses - the importance of the purple eye color, the existence of ghosts and mediums, the society controlling the use of contacting spirits - are casually brought up with the understanding that the person being talked to understands it already. Personally, I much prefer this type of worldbuilding, as I don’t like it when it gets to “anime-conversation” style, where I’m being explicitly explained concepts that, by all means, the character should already know. It’s much more natural to piece together the information we’re given, and to discover the whole picture more naturally.
We aren’t told until a conversation with his brother that our main character is even a trans man who secretly goes by the name Silas, which I thought was a nice change of pace to some books just Telling you. In the same way we’re told how the main character is autistic, simply by his reactions, his brother’s help, and how he reacts and thinks. It’s entirely naturally built into the character, and nothing feels manufactured.
The inner voice of the character - constantly mocking him, telling him to shut up, to behave, etc - being internally seen as a rabbit was an interesting choice. I felt it had a lot of symbolism, in the fact that we typically see rabbits as cute and nonthreatening, and yet the things it is saying to Silas are cruel. I thought it served as a nice mirror to the idea of their society “protecting” women (or anyone it deems to be women) by forcing them to be small and meek, and this being seen as a positive due to them being “the weaker sex.”
There’s also really well-done tension with the characters that Silas meets, where even when nothing is explicitly going wrong at that moment, you pick up on something being off. There were multiple characters that we met at the beginning who had some mildly reddish flags popping up for them, but otherwise were benign. But then, as the novel progressed, these issues became more pronounced until by the end you were almost expecting their heel-turn, but you were hoping the entire time you were wrong about it.
–
This novel ties together a lot of concepts and ideas extremely well, kept me hooked until the last page and even wincing at times. I highly recommend this book.
–
Trigger Warnings:
- Transphobia
- Ableism
- Sexual assault
- Gore; medical gore; explicit mentions of performing a cesarean section and removing the uterus
- Pregnancy
- Miscarriage
- Violence
–
“There’s a difference between weakness and survival.”
This book is a wonder. It’s bloody, and violent, and freeing. It lets you be yourself, guts and all, and doesn’t shy away from honesty and being true to oneself.
Our main character Silas (“Gloria”) is trapped by convention to be nothing more than a wife to produce (male) children. Despite his interest in anatomy and becoming a surgeon, and absolutely no interest in being a wife or a woman at all. However, when he tries to break away from the life forced on him, he’s caught and sent to a kind of finishing school to turn “women” like him into perfect wives - or else. This is a great setting for a gothic horror. Our main character is trapped, with no or very few allies, and must do whatever he can to save himself before it’s too late.
The society clearly takes its inspiration from the spiritualist movement of the early 1800s. (I personally just want to mention this because this era is so fascinating to me, and I almost love every novel I’ve read that takes direct inspiration from it.) I thought it was interesting that originally women were the ones doing the medium work, but once it was discovered how to use the power for war and money women were banned from doing it - or risk becoming ill. And this begs the question - is this “Veil-sickness” real, or is it manufactured to ensure compliance?
–
I thought the worldbuilding for the setting was phenomenal - it’s not just simply info-dumping at us. Concepts that we learn more about as the novel progresses - the importance of the purple eye color, the existence of ghosts and mediums, the society controlling the use of contacting spirits - are casually brought up with the understanding that the person being talked to understands it already. Personally, I much prefer this type of worldbuilding, as I don’t like it when it gets to “anime-conversation” style, where I’m being explicitly explained concepts that, by all means, the character should already know. It’s much more natural to piece together the information we’re given, and to discover the whole picture more naturally.
We aren’t told until a conversation with his brother that our main character is even a trans man who secretly goes by the name Silas, which I thought was a nice change of pace to some books just Telling you. In the same way we’re told how the main character is autistic, simply by his reactions, his brother’s help, and how he reacts and thinks. It’s entirely naturally built into the character, and nothing feels manufactured.
The inner voice of the character - constantly mocking him, telling him to shut up, to behave, etc - being internally seen as a rabbit was an interesting choice. I felt it had a lot of symbolism, in the fact that we typically see rabbits as cute and nonthreatening, and yet the things it is saying to Silas are cruel. I thought it served as a nice mirror to the idea of their society “protecting” women (or anyone it deems to be women) by forcing them to be small and meek, and this being seen as a positive due to them being “the weaker sex.”
There’s also really well-done tension with the characters that Silas meets, where even when nothing is explicitly going wrong at that moment, you pick up on something being off. There were multiple characters that we met at the beginning who had some mildly reddish flags popping up for them, but otherwise were benign. But then, as the novel progressed, these issues became more pronounced until by the end you were almost expecting their heel-turn, but you were hoping the entire time you were wrong about it.
–
This novel ties together a lot of concepts and ideas extremely well, kept me hooked until the last page and even wincing at times. I highly recommend this book.