Jospeh White definitely delivered in the horror department – so much of this was truly fucking disturbing, and some of Silas’ trans experience really got to me. 

However, overall, I didn’t love the book. After a strong opening, I felt the story lost its way, and by the end I wasn’t feeling much of anything about it. 

One of the issues is that I felt the fantasy elements weren't explored/explained enough, even though they're a pivotal part of the book. It seemed Silas' ability to reach the veil etc. always worked in the exact way he wanted it to at all times - yet none of the girls used it once?? They were basically damsels in distress, unable to use the very powers they'd been put in that 'school' for having, while good ol' Silas saved the day. It did whiff a little of misogyny. 

I also didn’t love that Silas fell in love with the very first trans person he met, seemingly JUST because she was trans. A lot more goes into relationships than that my guy. Additionally, Mary's lesbian ‘coming out’ moment seemed so out of the blue. It felt as if I was meant to have seen hints of it before, but I never caught any of them, so it felt pretty cheap.

The book also had exclusively white characters, and for no possible reason I can imagine. There were plenty of people of colour living in Victorian Britain, but maybe Joseph White’s American brain couldn’t comprehend that. He even actually says in his author’s note that most medical experimentation at the time was performed on ethnic minorities, so surely one non-English person could have been included? But not surprisingly, the two info resources he mentions are about Americans - fuck the country you’ve exploited for this story then, I guess? 

It's also pretty fucked up that they used a (as far as I can tell) cis male narrator for the audiobook. It makes no fucking sense. Silas was born female, and obviously didn’t have hormone therapy, so his voice would never have dropped. In fact, I’m not sure his voice is ever mentioned. So, the bloody obvious choice for narrator would be someone with a high/feminine voice pitching it as low as possible – because THAT’S WHAT SILAS WOULD SOUND LIKE. Surely there are some trans men around who never started on T, or a NB person with a fem voice, or even, god forbid, a woman. Instead, we have a bloke speaking in a girly voice for the whole book, which is pretty much the most offensive way possible for a trans man to be represented. Absolutely WILD choice.