Stopped reading when a guy strangled a person (that was already dying with his intestines out) with tendrils took form another body? Sorry but this is not horror, it's splatter which is a different genre and I really don't appreciate it. I am pretty sure this novella is going to be loved by people with this taste. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

There are a lot of great ideas here, and the overall concept-- Lovecraftian horror during the 1788 Doctors' Riot-- is a firecracker. Ultimately I felt like the book fell a little short in that it felt a little uneven-- I felt like I got a lot more of a villain's arousal at dead bodies than the protagonist and his motivations, outside of plot-specific things like trying to stop bodies from being stolen. That said, I think this really could be the launching point for what will end up being a very solid series, all faults aside.

I for one sometimes get tired of books being compared to movies. I hate the pigeon-holing that can occur from a comparison and an immediate image that we all generate. As an example – if I told you a horror book I was reading reminded me of a comedy movie, you’d be thrown, confused and not sure what to think. If I said a horror book reminded me of a horror movie, if you hated that movie, then you might not give the book a chance, right?

Well – at the end of last week, I found myself doing just that over on Twitter. People either saw I was reading this on Goodreads or they themselves tweeted that they wanted to read it and I chimed in.

So to go straight to the guts of what I said – this book is like watching a mashup of the following movies; Gangs of New York and Sweeney Todd (no singing!) Throw in Lovecraftian themes with a medical-gallows narrative running throughout and you have a somewhat good starting point.

Hicks also throws in social themes, based off when the story is set, and he has another winner on his hands.
Lately, I focused more on what the book brought to, minimizing the synopsis a bit, simply because you all can go read the synopsis on Goodreads, or if you’re reading this on Kendall Reviews you can scroll below this review and it’ll be there.

But there’s a few plot points I’d love to expand upon a bit here.

The story follows two distinct narratives. The first is the physician’s side. Bodies are being stolen from graves, predominantly from the African-American cemeteries. On the surface it appears to be more of the same and continued poor treatment of that group of people. Underneath though, we learn of horrible experiments being conducted – a book being used to try and open a door. Hicks does Lovecraft and cosmic horror better than most here. The battle field scenes were astounding and you’ll find yourself smelling gunpowder and hearing injured men crying for help.

The other part of the story follows our main character – Salem Hawley. Salem is a free man now, and once he finds out about these grave robberies takes it upon himself to bring some attention to it. Soon though he is pulled into something far deeper than he imagined.

If you follow Hicks on any of his social media’s he is very vocal about the state of the world currently and posts/tweets frequently about social injustices and I enjoyed seeing this come through in the character Salem. Not much back story is given about Hawley, but we don’t need it. The way he moves and reacts and cares is enough for us to see the lifeblood Hicks has poured into this character through his words.

I chuckled at the beginning when Hicks included a character with the last name Hicks (Jr too be accurate). ‘Here we go,’ I chuckled, the author pulling a Stephen King movie cameo. But that was my ignorance to the real life story that this book was based off of, and I was glad to see Michael lay out the story (with links) and the liberties he took in the afterword.

I said it before on Twitter, but this was one of the few times I went into a book knowing it’s a part of a trilogy and was happy it was. Usually I struggle with some of those titles because I know not everything will be wrapped up, but in this case it works really well. The main part is wrapped up and Hicks gives us Hawley’s next direction, which I can’t wait for.

5/5 stars for a stunning blend of medical thriller/cosmic horror and grim-filled gutter violence. A must read!
**Please note this review will be featured on Kendall Reviews and when it is Goodreads/Book Bub and Amazon will updated accordingly!**

Rating: ★★★★

Synopsis

Having won his emancipation after fighting on the side of the colonies during the American Revolution, Salem Hawley is a free man. Only a handful of years after the end of British rule, Hawley finds himself drawn into a new war unlike anything he has ever seen.

New York City is on the cusp of a new revolution as the science of medicine advances, but procuring bodies for study is still illegal. Bands of resurrectionists are stealing corpses from New York cemeteries, and women of the night are disappearing from the streets, only to meet grisly ends elsewhere.

After a friend’s family is robbed from their graves, Hawley is compelled to fight back against the wave of exhumations plaguing the Black cemetery. Little does he know, the theft of bodies is key to far darker arts being performed by the resurrectionists. If successful, the work of these occultists could spell the end of the fledgling American Experiment… and the world itself.

The Resurrectionists, the first book in the Salem Hawley series, is a novella of historical cosmic horror from the author of Broken Shells and Mass Hysteria

Review

Thanks to the author for an advanced reading copy of The Resurrectionists (The Salem Hawley Series, Book 1) in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this eARC did not influence my thoughts or opinions on the novella.

THAT KEALAN PATRICK BURKE COVER, THOUGH

Not since Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom have I been so intrigued by a Lovecraftian inspired novella, though the shock and awe presented in Hick’s work is truly captivating.

The character of Salem Hawley is one you can truly stand behind as he fights for the betterment of his fellow Black Man, though to say he simply falls into a greater conspiracy is putting it lightly. Something otherworldly has awakened and it’ll take more than pikes and shovels to force it back from whence it came.

The only downside I can be a little nitpicky over is that I felt like it ended abruptly. Even knowing that it is apart of something greater, I felt too wound up for it to be over. Having said that, I do like how Hick’s builds up for the coming sequels and the author notes give us a glimpse into his inspiration.

All in all, a very enjoyable read for fans of Hick’s work and for those who enjoy Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror.

I would have read this novella just because of the author, whom I admire; but the combination of history plus the Lovecraft Cosmos (a century prior to Lovecraft's own advent) made the story all the more delectable, as did the plot thread of overcoming injustice, bigotry, racism, and sexism.

A decade after the bloody American Revolution, a freed former slave, Salem Hawley, is inadvertently involved in trying to stop nefarious body-snatching in the blacks' cemetery, from which corpses are removed for anatomical studies (much as the notorious Burke and Hare in Edinburgh). The resurrectionists are not the sole issue at hand; a small group of megalomaniacal physicians at New York Hospital have seen Cosmic Truth on the battlefield. The infamous Al Azif in hand, the intent is to bring the Old Ones into our dimension, and let our world burn.