Resurrection Men (edit title/settings)

• Rated 2 stars

“too slow and single minded.”

• Rated 4 stars

“This book was nothing like what I expected. I honestly thought that it was going to be a ghoulish horror novel about a boy working with the bodysnatchers. Instead, it was rather like reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (or almost any other of Dickens' works). The author's style was all his own--he didn't write like Dickens (or try to). Like Dickens, he dealt with the grim and gritty reality of the London underground. The story was dark, sad, and grisly, but ended in a satisfyingly positive light. Warning for the sensitive: this book contains not only violence (and violence against children), but child molestation. None of this was terribly graphic, but it was definitely present in the story.”

• Rated 4 stars

“ Reviewed by Christian C. for TeensReadToo.com

1830, Modena, Italy. 12-year-old Victor returned to his home and had to watch with horror the cruel murder of his parents by three Tyrolean soldiers. The reason? They were Carboniaris, a group of revolutionaries that fought to keep Italy united.

After the massacre, the soldiers sold Victor as a cabin boy to the Chief Mate of the Ceres, a ship that was about to set sail. The ship departed from Italy, and sailed along the Mediterranean coast through the Strait of Gibraltar. It sailed past the coasts of Portugal, northern Spain, and France.

One day, in the middle of a big storm, Victor climbed up the mainmast, all the way to the topgallant, trying to escape from a crew member whom he had accused of stealing food. But as the seaman drew closer, Victor lost his footing, fell on the deck, and crushed his leg completely. The Chief Mate didn't think twice: "A cabin boy who cannot walk is of no value to this ship.... Throw him overboard." Which he did.

Clinging to a gaff, Victor drifted in the middle of the sea for several days, until he arrived at the coast of England. He was rescued by an old man and his dog. The old man treated his leg, fed him, and taught him how to speak English and fight with his crutch.

After a few months, the old man couldn't afford to keep Victor any more and, once again, Victor was sold. This time to Tipple and Biggs, two unscrupulous men who took Victor to London, by hiding him in a coffin with a decaying body.

In London, Victor lived in a house full of children and animals. He was forced to beg in the streets during the day. Life in London at that time was difficult: jobs were scarce, health conditions were deplorable, the streets were full of excrement and mud; people were dying of cholera. Victor soon discovered that there was a black market for dead bodies and body parts. Doctors wanted to study the human body and were willing to pay high amounts of money for them. People like Tripple and Biggs met the demand, and were willing to do anything for a few guineas, including digging up corpses, kidnapping, selling, or even killing someone. Victor found out that Tripple and Biggs were after some of his friends, and he decided that he had to reveal the mastermind of this wicked market and put an end to it.

RESURRECTION MEN is an intense, dark work of historical fiction that made me read every page intently to the end, while trying to cope with the knot of sadness and anguish that I had in my stomach. T. K. Welsh's rich vocabulary and detailed descriptions, where almost no noun goes without an adjective, transported me to the streets of London, and made me smell the putrid odors of the city, live the horrors of the children's lives, witness the horrid dissections of the dead bodies, and hear the unsettling noise of the broken bones.

When I finished the novel, I was looking forward to reading the section at the end of the book that explained which historical facts of the book were real, but unfortunately, there was none.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction and is interested in learning more about an unfortunate time in the history of medicine and the city of London. But if you're looking for a fun, happy read, this may not be it!
”

• Rated 5 stars

“A super book! Very Dickensian, which I love. Setting was partly 1830's London and trying to live in appalling conditions. The resurrection men were those who dug up bodies for science. It was also about a doctor using these bodies. And about a boy living on the streets until a nice doctor takes him in. A great book.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Publishers Weekly called it, "A haunting tour of London's underclass during the 1830s...Welsh's visceral descriptions of industrial London are unflinching...Teens will likely be both captivated by Victor's harrowing story as well as his ability to prevail in the face of harsh injustices." VOYA said, "(Welsh's) plot and writing style are reminiscent of Oliver Twist by Dickens but far more graphic. Teen readers will thoroughly enjoy the hair-raising suspense in this historical thriller." And KLIATT said, "Like M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, this look at sinister events in history makes the era come alive and lingers in the memory."

Inspired by the 1831 “Italian Boy” trial of body snatchers in London, England, RESURRECTION MEN is a spine-tingling murder mystery that pits a beggar boy named Victor against a nefarious group of Resurrection Men. In this tumultuous dark underworld, where a “fresh subject” can fetch as much as nine guineas -- the yearly salary of a working man -- Victor must risk his life to uncover the identity of the murderer who is at the heart of London’s furtive trade in human corpses.”