The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black Author: E. B. Hudspeth | Language: English | ISBN:
B00987MQRQ | Format: PDF
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black Description
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.
- File Size: 63977 KB
- Print Length: 192 pages
- Publisher: Quirk Books (May 28, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00987MQRQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,570 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #29
in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels > Historical & Biographical Fiction
- #29
in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels > Historical & Biographical Fiction
This is a really promising premise: Brilliant young 19th Century surgeon becomes convinced that creatures of mythology were actual once-living creatures based upon contemporary genetic mutations and birth defects "showing" dormant, archaic traits. Increasingly obsessed with the idea, when he cannot find fossil evidence, he begins to create the creatures themselves in his laboratory, using living and recently dead specimens for his experiments. While he is at it, he begins to make detailed, extensive anatomical drawings of the creatures based, he claims, on actual specimens. Increasingly obsessed and persecuted, he and his experiments disappear.
The book is divided into two sections. The first is a sort of thumbnail biography of the mysterious Dr. Black; the second is his illustrations. Both have their charms, but both fall just short of the ambitious mark they set.
The "biography" has the makings of a very good short story - the premise is good and interesting and there are some very nice details. The problem is that the very nice details are not enough to sustain momentum and the characters come across mostly as ciphers. No one really emerges to care about, and while it is interesting, it is not gripping. It is perfectly readable, but not involving.
The second part, the Codex Extinct Animalia, is a lot of fun to look at, but again, there is something that keeps it shy of being absorbing. In part, I think, it is that while the drawings are very good, they lack a certain quality that imbues the best anatomical drawings. They don't quite live, the way the best scientific drawings (19th C or contemporary) do.
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