Name: The Resurrectionist
Rating: 3.56 (25 reviews)
ISBN: 9781594746161

E. B. Hudspeth

A famous doctor in 1870s Philadelphia traces his story from his youth as the son of a grave robber through his mysterious disappearance at the end of his life, marked by his investigation into an unconventional hypothesis about mythological beasts being the evolutionary ancestors of the human race.

The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

The Resurrectionist

Brittany

When one dies they neither ascend to the heavens nor descend to hell, they instead become cured—freed from an illness and healed from the suffering of mortality. Our consciousness, our awareness, is a symptom of our body and is secondary to the mystery of our physical chemistry. 

I suppose I can understand his strict and linear approach to medical science, but I believe the journal of laws needs to be held lightly so that one may easily read from it when needed, but may also let go and be freed from its weight in an instant.

Nature governs its creations equally; a man can perish as easily as a plant can be destroyed beneath one’s heel.

Jasper

Nature governs it's creations equally; a man can perish as easily as a plant can be destroyed beneath one's heel.

orpheus

my enjoyment of this was mixed. while i did enjoy the magnificent drawings and parts of the biography, i couldn’t help but wish there was…well, more. so much of this felt like a missed opportunity and the biography could have been more fleshed out and less dry. in any case, i did enjoy what i read.

kelsey

Very surprised I hadn't picked this up sooner. I wish it was longer, but what readers got was excellent! 

Kiersten

This was one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read, but it was SO good!

Caroline Boone

Andy Bayliss

i read this quite awhile ago but it was very interesting, the sketches and illustrations were gorgeous and helped bring the world of Dr. Spencer Black to life.

Marissa Scudlo

Zoe Smolen

This book was ok. I would have rather it was just a novel than this awkward narration that sounded like a History Channel documentary. I thought it was kind of disjointed and I wanted more of a spooky plot line

J.N. van Soest

I didn't really care for the story itself, I mostly bought and read this book for its illustrations. So that being said, it was pretty much an average book.

The story was interesting in the way Dr. Black developed in life. Besides that, I didn't really care. 

The codex is the main atraction for sure. I will keep this book more as decoration than as an actual book in my collection.

Cherie Dykstra

Mirror

Lavinia 

Mirto

Lia Silva

Jada

Naomi

An extraordinary biography. A gallery of astonishing work. The legacy of a madman. Philadelphia, the late 1870s. A city of gas lamps, cobblestone streets, and horse-drawn carriages—and home to the controversial surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. The son of a grave robber, young Dr. Black studies at Philadelphia’s esteemed Academy of Medicine, where he develops an unconventional hypothesis: What if the world’s most celebrated mythological beasts—mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs—were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind? The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from a childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, and the mysterious disappearance at the end of his life. The second book is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts—dragons, centaurs, Pegasus, Cerberus—all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations. You need only look at these images to realize they are the work of a madman. The Resurrectionist tells his story.

The Resurrectionist The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black

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