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。