The Resurrectionist
The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
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3.7 • 65 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Discover a nineteenth-century Philadelphia surgeon’s lost codex and his macabre quest to prove a controversial hypothesis by any means necessary in this dark fantasy book.
Part stunning coffee table art book, part fictional biography, this gaslamp bestiary features grotesquely detailed anatomical illustrations and a chilling horror novella.
“Disturbingly lovely . . . a cabinet of curiosities, stitching history and mythology and sideshow into an altogether different creature.”—Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus
The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first part is a chilling fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from his childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, his cruel and crazed experiments, and, finally, his mysterious disappearance. The second part is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts, all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hudspeth provides the biography of fictional 19th-century scientist and surgeon Spencer Black, whose work takes a dark turn when he develops a theory that birth defects are latent body memories the body's attempt to return to some earlier, more "perfect" form. Black's attempts to recreate these genetic models are described through biographical writing and excerpts from his diary, creating an image of a dreadful human who is blinded by his own faulty theories. The majority of the work is taken up with Black's magnum opus, The Codex Extinct Animalia, which contains brief descriptions of the creatures Black created, along with extensive drawings showing their appearance, skeletons, and musculature. While the textual portion of the work is horrific, the artistic portion is almost clinical in its detachment, making the interaction of the two all the more disturbing. The book is a welcome addition to any library of dark fantasy, with its beautiful portraiture and gripping description of a man's descent into perversity.
Customer Reviews
Review
Was interesting...certainly a fascinating short read !
Hmm
This was certainly a book…
Great Weekend Read
This was the perfect book to break up some of the heavier reading I was doing. I saw this was the author’s first book and I thought it was an interesting piece of history and a dark topic intriguing topic to cover for a first book. I had never heard of Doctor Black and he feels like a character out of a fantasy novel. Natural scientists will enjoy the break away from reality and inspire that “what if” moment we forget about. Fantasy writers and fans of Lovecraft will also most likely find this enjoyable. I really enjoyed it.