REVIEW: The Resurrectionist

PLOT: 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.

REVIEW: I think I see what's going on here. This is kind of like a book that reminds me of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, in the sense that it's trying to provide a strange tale of a strange person using strange pictures and strange storylines. Honestly there isn't enough present in the book to even consider it much of a story at all. The shorter, first half of the book is letters and diary entries written by Dr. Black along with commentary as if it were a collection of history in a non-fiction book. The latter, and larger half is Black's book The Codex Extinct Animalia which is neat to look at and the illustrations are beautiful. However, I at least half expected it to be a tie at the end of the story, to kind of explain what happens to Black and his family that is sort of left open ended at the end of the first half. It really is kind of a neat book to look at in that sense, but I really didn't read enough story to feel as if it was a book I read, rather than looked at. It has a strange, freakshow vibe to it by the end of reading Black's letters to his brother and his thoughts become more erratic as the time passes. It's a book that's supposed to creep on the senses as Black goes from genius scientist to devious madman, and really without much story to back that up it doesn't have much of an impact by the time it's all said and done. I do however, think this book is prime brainstorming for a creepy mad scientist movie, or maybe even further Resurrectionist books. Perhaps the next time though, we can skip the illustrations and some of the "non-fictionalized" posters and pictures and just have meat and potatoes without the sides for our fictional dinner.

 

RATED : ( PG-13 )

WRITING : ( 6 / 10 )

STORY : ( 4 / 10 )

COVER : ( 8 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 5 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 5 / 10 )