The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Published by Daphne Press
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Alternative Universe, London, Coming of Age, Dark Fantasy, Gothic Fantasy, Disabled and Neurodivergent Authors, LGBTQIA+ Authors, Transgender Authors, Diverse Representation, Magic Users, Historical Fantasy, Victorian History, Mental Health, Neurodivergent, OwnVoices Representation, Queer Characters, Transgender Characters, Summoning Magic, Various Magic, Gothic Horror
My Rating:
Published on: 5th September 2023
Pages: 400
Disability Representation: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fictional Condition, Neurodivergent
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Forbidden Planet / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones / BookBeat Audio
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A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.

New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!

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 trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.

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 Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.

Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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I’ve heard so many good things about Andrew Joseph White’s first book, Hell Followed With Us, so when I had the chance to read his next book, I took it. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White is a brilliant horror story with transgender and autism representation that captivated me from start to finish.

Set in an alternate Victorian London where the veil between our world and the spirit world has thinned, and people with violet eyes have the ability to work spirit magic, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White follows the story of Silas. When the veil first thinned, spirit work was considered suitable for women, until men realised that it gave them power. Now, men are allowed by law to do spirit work, but women are prohibited and are used for breeding.

Silas is transgender, a boy born in a girl’s body, and with violet eyes, he is destined to be married off to a wealthy man. The idea of being pregnant horrifies and terrifies Silas, and so he decides to do something risky. He dresses up as a boy and attends a Royal Speaker Society gala in the place of a young medium who couldn’t attend. Instead, Silas will receive the spirit-work seal meant for the real Mr Roswell. With a seal, he can escape his life, live as a man and train to become a doctor.

What Silas doesn’t take into account is the test that he has to complete to win his seal, and when things go very wrong, he’s sent to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. He’s “diagnosed” with Veil sickness, which he soon finds out is what all the residents at Braxton’s have been diagnosed with. They’re all girls who don’t fit within the Speaker’s perfect idea of what a wife should be, and they’re all there to be cured. When it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems and that previous residents who were sent to Bethlem Royal Hospital never actually made it there, Silas starts to investigate further.

At first, he feels completely alone. The other residents are either unfriendly, concentrating on becoming cured or too terrified to draw attention to themselves. As Silas finds support and kinship from two unexpected sources, he begins to unravel the mystery of Braxton piece by horrific piece.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a dark horror novel that unapologetically looks at how society treats people who are different. I’ve recently seen people discussing whether young adult books are becoming too dark, with the suggestion that they are being written for adult readers rather than young people. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a difficult novel to read, and that’s from my perspective as a queer disabled adult. But that is not to say that it’s unsuitable for young people, nor was it written with them in mind. Rather, the opposite; this book is White saying “I see you,” and that is something that many teenagers need to hear.

While the main character of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is transgender and autistic, the addition of Veil Sickness means that this is a book that will resonate with many readers. White conveys so many feelings of being different, of what it’s like to be viewed as useful/a commodity to non-disabled people/people in power when it suits them, and to be considered as wrong, “ill”, just because you’re different. The residents of Braxton are powerless apart, but together they are able to achieve much more, and that is an important message in a young adult novel.

White provides content warnings at the beginning of the novel, which I have copied at the top of my review and added my own as well. I strongly recommend checking them before picking this one up because his descriptions are very graphic at times, and in conjunction with the storyline, it can be quite triggering (it was for me, at least). I say all this not to put people off reading, but to ensure everyone has a positive reading experience. I thoroughly enjoyed The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, and I will definitely be checking out his other book and any future titles.

About Andrew Joseph White

Andrew Joseph White is the trans, autistic, and bestselling author of Hell Followed With Us, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Compound Fracture, and You Weren't Meant to be Human. Born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, and lives in Virginia with his wife and their antisocial cat.

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Thank you for reading my review of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White! This post was part of the GeekDis event, which you can follow on social media using the #GeekDis. You can also view all this year’s content at the GeekDis 2023 content hub!

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