Before we begin, let me be up front: this book is a difficult read. And to author Andrew Joseph White's credit, he gives more than ample warning about this. I'm aware that there's no way to account for every single potential difficult reading situation, because trauma doesn't follow a standardized script and pull from a lean list of logical triggers. However, the things The Spirit Bares Its Teeth confronts—not just confronts, but digs into over and over and over—are things much more couched in broader human and historical unpleasantness.

I will not be going into detail on these things in my review, because I would like you to be able to assess the story and see if what it offers is enough for you to brave these things. However, the prime thing I will offer a warning for is intricate surgical gore: detailed, constant, and vivid. If that's an unconditional deal-breaker, this isn't the book for you. Because Silas's journey is couched in both real and metaphorical surgical precision: from impromptu procedures to imagined hysterectomies, from the consistency of eyeballs to the brutality of vivisection. I nearly tapped out, which is probably a testament to White's vivid imagery.

With that aside: the story. Set in an alternate Victorian London, the world has seen the appearance of people with violet eyes. Alongside this event came the thinning of the Veil between the worlds of the living and the dead. Violet-eyed people can see through and manipulate this Veil; however, England has set it in stone that only men can become Speakers. Violet-eyed women may not tamper with the veil. They may, however, be married off in paranormal business dealings, hopefully to bear violet-eyed sons. In fact, he's already promised to a young suitor of his own age, introduced as Edward.

To the world at large, Silas is a barely-functional, violet-eyed girl who is fortunately beautiful enough to marry off to a Speaker. Silas knows he is a boy, though he fluctuates between wanting that to be an accepted fact and choosing to toe the line of femininity for his own safety. He also has autism (not explicitly named, as autism was not understood and named until decades after this story takes place) and fights to simultaneously toe the line of social acceptability—wearing two masks at once at all times. Despite Silas's unique abilities, his interest is in the living body: he dreams of becoming a surgeon like his older brother George, and has practiced in secret under George's watchful eye.

After a bold attempt at sneaking into a ceremony to be recognized as a speaker, Silas is whisked away to—let's not mince words—an institution. Couched as a place where young ladies with "Veil sickness" may overcome their troublesome ways and become good Speaker wives, it's exactly the sort of place you think it is. It's also exactly the sort of place where Silas must go full silent running if he ever hopes to make it out in one piece.

However, there's more going on here. Girls who are especially troublesome disappear without a trace, and Silas's tampering with the Veil reveals where those girls may have gone. The ones who remain have their own troubles to deal with, existing in a tense found family where self-preservation gives way to mutual care when Headmaster subjects one of the girls to "special training."

To go into much more would be giving away some of the book's best discoveries. Suffice to say Silas finds an unexpectedly similar ally in his betrothed, and together they must dodge under the watchful eyes of the staff and Silas's fellow students/patients to unearth the institution's dark secrets.

If I could change one thing about The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, it would be the presence of Daphne—as in I'd have loved more. While it's understandable that she must be something of a distant presence, I would love to have had more time as a reader to get to know her. I say this with the awareness that that's probably part of the point of her being so (physically) distant throughout many of Silas's trials. But I also feel like there are unplumbed depths to her, and I closed the book wishing for more time with her.

As mentioned above, this book is extremely brutal, and probably not a comfy read for people who can't stand extended ruminations on incisions, stitches, vivisections, and the like. To give you a metric: I tend to be pretty okay with written descriptions, with actual visuals being where I have to step away. These descriptions were so vivid that it didn't take actual visuals to make my hands start trembling a bit. Props to White: making prose that gnarly in practice is an art. Just be warned. The depictions of the mistreatment of people in a psychiatric setting is also especially gruesome, and gets more so as the book goes on. Thematically and descriptively, it's a lot. But to tell its story, it also needs to be.

If you can stomach all of that, I recommend this book. Its worldbuilding is intriguing, and rests largely on humanity's interpretation of a single reality-altering event. Living with Silas as a first-person narrator is insightful, as we get to see every flicker of internal conflict and self-actualization play out. I also loved seeing time and consideration given to how the rest of the world was functioning under these new circumstances. It's a raw and difficult read, but a worthwhile one.