Publication
Ballantine Books (1998), Edition: 1st Ballantine Books Domestic Ed, 432 pages
Original publication date
1996
Collections
Subjects
Description
In a new and major novel, the creator of fantastic universes o vampires and witches takes us now into the world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. He is ghost, genii, demon, angel--pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world. There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.
User reviews
LibraryThing member bkwormblogger
Okay, so I finally finished it. I didn't like the narrator or the narration. I found Ms Rice's writing clumpy as if she'd tried a little too hard.Overall I was glad to get to the end. Shame.
LibraryThing member lucretia610
I gave up on Anne after reading this thing.
LibraryThing member ogopogo
DANGER IF YOU READ THIS REVIEW - I SPOIL THE END...
I started this book and got more than half way through before leaving it at the side of my bed for a few months. i picked it up and finished it off over the past few days but was soooo bored with the dialogue. Gregory going on and on for pages
I started this book and got more than half way through before leaving it at the side of my bed for a few months. i picked it up and finished it off over the past few days but was soooo bored with the dialogue. Gregory going on and on for pages
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about his grand plan and how he had planned everything - every possible care had been taken and i couldnt help thinking - what are you planning to do with the bodies? thats alot of dead folk littering your new land? Not one of your best books Ms Rice - loved the vampire chronicles and Volin was amazing - to me this book tries too hard to comform to the same style as those books and falls short. Show Less
LibraryThing member ct.bergeron
He is a ghost, demon, angel - in love with the good, in thrall o the evil. He pours out his heart to us, telling his astonishing story when he finds himself - in our own time, in New York City - a dazed withness to the murder of a young girl called Esther and ineplicably obsessed by the desire to
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avenge her. He takes us back to his mortal youth in th magnigicent Babylone - the gateway to the pagan gods, a wonder of ziggurats, and ships at anchor from all nations. We see Azriel at twenty - A jew, educated, rich, Beatiful, fiercely devoted to his captive hebrew tribe, and dedicated to his prophets Jermiah and Isaiah. In this time of bloody wars and religious up-heavals, greedy king and cunning magicians who vie with rabbis for spiritual dominion, Azriel falls victim to a royal plot compounded by his devotion to his hebrew god - only to be plucked from death by evil priests and sorceresses and transformed into a Genii commanded to do their bidding. Challenging these forces of destruction, marshalling all his strenghth and wit to defeat them, Azriel embarks on his perilous journey through time - From Babylon's hanging gardens, to the europe of the Black Death to Manhatan in the 1990's - and ultimately to his crucial confrontation with the ambitious and charismatic multi-billionaire, the televangelst-terrorist Gregory Belkin, father of the mysteriously murderd Esther - And the twentieth century embodiment of all that Azriel has struggled against. As Azriel's quest approaches it's climatic Horror, he dares to use and to risk his supernatural powers in the hope of forestalling a world-threatening conspiracy, and redeenning, at last, what was denied to him so long ago: his own eternal human soul. Show Less
LibraryThing member Djupstrom
A good departure from Rice's vampire series. This is a smart history speckled tale. I like it!
LibraryThing member MoiraStirling
Odd. Nicely written, but a tad difficult to get into. As always, I enjoyed the imagery she presented, but felt the ending was not as nicely wrapped up as she usually aims for. The ending was rushed, and anticlimactic, but the story concept was fresh.
LibraryThing member MoiraStirling
Odd. Nicely written, but a tad difficult to get into. As always, I enjoyed the imagery she presented, but felt the ending was not as nicely wrapped up as she usually aims for. The ending was rushed, and anticlimactic, but the story concept was fresh.
LibraryThing member Anagarika
Great story. She's great weaving history into her stories.
LibraryThing member BionerdAZ
A great story, and a philosophical one at that. Ms Rice seems to be able to describe her (and mine) philosophy of life eloquently and succinctly. Plato, St. Thomas of Aquinas, could not have said it better than her character, Zurvan: "...If an activity is not grounded in 'to love' or 'to learn',
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then it does not have value..." In Azriel, we see the dichotomy of humanity, the hatred and the love, the desire to do good, and the desire to do evil...those forces each of us must fight within ourselves. All this is wrapped up in a tale that spans centuries, and you are left with a feeling and a desire "to love and to learn"... Show Less
LibraryThing member Anagarika-Sean
Great story. She's great at weaving history into her stories.
LibraryThing member justine
An amazing work, begining in Babylon during the Hebrew exile and ending in modern-day New York.
LibraryThing member stacyinthecity
I really enjoyed the beginning. Great page turning, interesting, held my attention! But I was quite disappointed in the ending. Parts seemed to drag, etc. It also left me with unanswered questions that seemed to me to be the result of sloppy writing. Definately unsatisfying at the end, but because
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of the great beginning, I'd still give it 3 stars. I am feeling generous. Show Less
LibraryThing member chicjohn
Well crafted chiller as usual
LibraryThing member Meluna
A very slow read. Although the story could have been great, the book is in style closer to Memnoch or Body Thief. The framing story is pointless, half the book is just ramblings and the main character feels inconsistent. To compensate for the long stretches where nothing happens, the end is rushed
Anne Rice has written many great books, but this is unfortunately not one of them.
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and too short.Anne Rice has written many great books, but this is unfortunately not one of them.
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LibraryThing member csweder
This is a quick read with the usual elements of a Rice novel: a character who could be considered evil at first comes to tell his story to the unsuspecting narrator.
This particular story covers the servant of the bones. A man who was sacrificed becomes cursed to serve whoever has his bones. He
This particular story covers the servant of the bones. A man who was sacrificed becomes cursed to serve whoever has his bones. He
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kills, steals and does whatever his master requires of him. That is until he wakes up from his slumber without being called--with his new powers he fights to stop the man claiming to be his master from creating the apocalypse. Show Less
LibraryThing member csweder
This is a quick read with the usual elements of a Rice novel: a character who could be considered evil at first comes to tell his story to the unsuspecting narrator.
This particular story covers the servant of the bones. A man who was sacrificed becomes cursed to serve whoever has his bones. He
This particular story covers the servant of the bones. A man who was sacrificed becomes cursed to serve whoever has his bones. He
Show More
kills, steals and does whatever his master requires of him. That is until he wakes up from his slumber without being called--with his new powers he fights to stop the man claiming to be his master from creating the apocalypse. Show Less
LibraryThing member AliceAnna
Some of her books seem to be all exposition and no action. This was one. Ask me the point of it. I couldn't tell you. I finished it a week ago and I couldn't tell you how it ended. Meh.
LibraryThing member GretchenLynn
This is the story about how a Babylonian boy becomes a demon/god. The act of the transformation is fairly gruesome. Because of that, he is an angry spirit who could wallow forever in his anger, but due to some wonderful tutors and other encounters in his life he sees that he can be more. I think my
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favorite line is from one of his 'masters', Zurvan, who teaches him that "If an activity is not grounded in "to love" or "to learn," it does not have value." I just enjoy that idea. Otherwise, I found it to be an interesting read, typical of Anne Rice's style. Show Less
LibraryThing member LVStrongPuff
Great stand alone book. This book will keep you hooked from the beginning from to end
LibraryThing member books-n-pickles
Not the first Anne Rice book I would have picked to read, but I had limited options. I liked the premise a lot--the idea of a human who became an immortal spirit and was coping (and not coping) with eternity--and I thoroughly enjoyed the sections set in the past. Once the story hit the present,
My biggest beef, though, is the uneven presentation. For about the first third of the book, Azrail's telling his story to Jonathan in quotations--literally every paragraph has quotation markes, though Jonathan doesn't interject nearly enough to justify this decision. What editor failed to tell Rice that this set up was a bad idea? And then we inexplicably lose the quote marks partway through. Azrail still addresses Jonathan from time to time, so why didn't a copyeditor point out that the book should be made internally consistent?
The uneven presentation applies to the narrative as well. It's a big deal that Azrail can't remember his past--but that's the first part of his story that he tells Jonathan, so he then has to remind us in the rest of the story that he doesn't remember this or that. It makes for a confusing read--we know more than he does, but we're asked to sympathize with him not knowing. Frustrating! A good editor should have had a serious conversation with Rice about moving the big reveal to later in the story. Or just not bothering with it--after all, if the reader already knows Azrail's past, then there's really no reason, narratively speaking, for it to be a secret. There wasn't really a purpose to his being suspended in time--and I know that Rice could have done it, I definitely got that vibe from the quality of the writing that survived the lack of editorial intervention.
A long read with good foundations, but I'm not going to rush out and insist that everyone read this book.
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though, it started to get bogged down. There were several agonizingly long conversations involving Gregory that just went on and on for pages without giving us much new information. For example, when he's with Azrail in his Temple of the mind, he spends about six or seven pages saying how much he wants to explain his grand plan...only to NOT do it. And I didn't get the sense from the text that the character was taunting, just that we never got around to it. Also felt that the divide between good and evil was a bit too obvious at the end, which made Azrail's sacrifice seem to count for less--it seemed like something almost anyone would have done in that situation, unlike his better-structured decision to sacrifice himself for the Jewish population of Babylon several thousand years earlier.My biggest beef, though, is the uneven presentation. For about the first third of the book, Azrail's telling his story to Jonathan in quotations--literally every paragraph has quotation markes, though Jonathan doesn't interject nearly enough to justify this decision. What editor failed to tell Rice that this set up was a bad idea? And then we inexplicably lose the quote marks partway through. Azrail still addresses Jonathan from time to time, so why didn't a copyeditor point out that the book should be made internally consistent?
The uneven presentation applies to the narrative as well. It's a big deal that Azrail can't remember his past--but that's the first part of his story that he tells Jonathan, so he then has to remind us in the rest of the story that he doesn't remember this or that. It makes for a confusing read--we know more than he does, but we're asked to sympathize with him not knowing. Frustrating! A good editor should have had a serious conversation with Rice about moving the big reveal to later in the story. Or just not bothering with it--after all, if the reader already knows Azrail's past, then there's really no reason, narratively speaking, for it to be a secret. There wasn't really a purpose to his being suspended in time--and I know that Rice could have done it, I definitely got that vibe from the quality of the writing that survived the lack of editorial intervention.
A long read with good foundations, but I'm not going to rush out and insist that everyone read this book.
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LibraryThing member TheCriticalTimes
As a bit of a diversion from the regular vampire lore, in The Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice we are taken to the hay days of a crowed chaotic Babylon. At times rambling on in non-essential dialogue this story is rich in detail and character development not to mention vivid descriptions of places
Before all that however we travel with Azriel and we see through his eyes the world as it once was. All this we are told by Azriel himself as he re-told it to Jonathan a writer who trapped himself for the winter in a remote lodge surrounded by miles of snow. The setup of an old tired spirit telling his life's story to a listener who has the power to write it all down appropriately is perhaps not a novel one, but it certainly works in this case. Although the story starts out very slowly with lots of re-starts, as Azriel puts in more and more detail, right around the middle of the novel things start to pick up and accelerate towards the ending.
After thousands of years of being immortal and mostly omnipotent, Azriel is confronted with a situation he can't change. He can't prevent the death of a young girl, something we later read has many more personal repercussions for our 'hero' dead or alive. The more he tries the less he seems to have a grip on his physical world around him and he can't prevent those around him he cares about to not perish at the hands of baser minds. Or can he? We are treated here to a well thought out and well told story on humanity as experienced by a being far from human. At times dragging on and at times too fantastical for its context, this novel his highly entertaining and engrossing.
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and people long past. A very long time ago a young boy sacrifices himself for the Jewish community in Babylon under the impending rule of King Cyrus. His reward is to live forever on as a powerful spirit neither completely alive and certainly not dead. Passed on from master to master Azriel eventually ends up in modern day New York where he becomes a pivotal component in the plan of a mad mastermind set on bringing about his version of the End of Days.Before all that however we travel with Azriel and we see through his eyes the world as it once was. All this we are told by Azriel himself as he re-told it to Jonathan a writer who trapped himself for the winter in a remote lodge surrounded by miles of snow. The setup of an old tired spirit telling his life's story to a listener who has the power to write it all down appropriately is perhaps not a novel one, but it certainly works in this case. Although the story starts out very slowly with lots of re-starts, as Azriel puts in more and more detail, right around the middle of the novel things start to pick up and accelerate towards the ending.
After thousands of years of being immortal and mostly omnipotent, Azriel is confronted with a situation he can't change. He can't prevent the death of a young girl, something we later read has many more personal repercussions for our 'hero' dead or alive. The more he tries the less he seems to have a grip on his physical world around him and he can't prevent those around him he cares about to not perish at the hands of baser minds. Or can he? We are treated here to a well thought out and well told story on humanity as experienced by a being far from human. At times dragging on and at times too fantastical for its context, this novel his highly entertaining and engrossing.
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LibraryThing member wb4ever1
After reading the majority of Anne Rice’s vampire books, and knocking out the saga of the Mayfair witches, I picked up SERVANT OF THE BONES, a seeming change of pace for the legendary Mistress of the Gothic, as there is nary a blood sucker or a witch to be found in its pages. The supernatural
This book, published in 1996, feels like Rice wanted to try a change of pace after writing all those books about vampires and witches and New Orleans. A brief stopover in Miami is as close as the story gets to the exotic Deep South, with most of the action taking place in the ancient Middle East, Medieval Europe, and modern NYC. Of course, the story unfolds in Rice’s typical fashion as a tale related by one character to another, in this case Azriel to a contemporary scholar after all to the book’s events have occurred, and this allows for a good use of the first person POV, another aspect of Rice’s writing she did very well. Through Azriel’s eyes, the ancient world and its sometimes obscure history come vividly to life, a testament to an awesome amount of historical research. Nobody ever accused Anne Rice of not doing her homework. As usual, the author can’t resist a detailed description or pass by an adjective, which is a strength or a weakness of hers depending on the reader. I think the strongest and most compelling parts of the book are the sections dealing with ancient times with its rich world building along with a deep dive into the arcane beliefs of Hebrews and pagan Babylonians. When Azriel wakes up in ‘90s New York City, the story looses momentum with the introduction of some incredibly verbose characters, though when Gregory Belkin, the Messianic leader of the Temple of the Mind of God and the story’s Big Bad, reveals his big plan to remake modern civilization in the manner of a latter day Alexander the Great, the story kicks into a higher gear. It’s a subplot that could have been the main focus of another book. And there is a gratuitous sex scene that reminds the reader that if Anne Rice had written nothing but erotica, she would still have been a success. I found what Rice had to say about faith and God and the mystery of death to be an interesting take and food for thought. Yet, there were times where I didn’t wonder if this story hadn’t started out as another tale of Lestat before Rice decided to switch out her famous vampire for a djinn and go in another direction. Though I prefer her tales of blood suckers, as it is, she wrote a decent standalone historical/fantasy/horror novel that certainly left her fans wanting more.
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creature this time is a Djinn, who in Rice’s universe is an immortal spirit who can make itself physical by pulling atoms out of the atmosphere at will while possessing the ability to teleport across vast spaces and distances. This protagonist is named Azriel, who was once a young Hebrew man in ancient Babylon at the time it was conquered by Cyrus the Great. Young Azriel, who, as a mortal, can see other spirits, is betrayed by his own people in a scheme that would result in their return to ancient Palestine. In a deliberately botched ceremony where Azriel was to impersonate the statue of a deity come to life, he is transformed into an earth bound entity, bound to his gold encrusted skeleton and forced to do the bidding of whoever possesses them—hence the title, SERVANT OF THE BONES. The book takes Azriel from ancient Babylon through history to modern times, where he becomes embroiled in the deadly plans of a genocidal cult leader in New York City.This book, published in 1996, feels like Rice wanted to try a change of pace after writing all those books about vampires and witches and New Orleans. A brief stopover in Miami is as close as the story gets to the exotic Deep South, with most of the action taking place in the ancient Middle East, Medieval Europe, and modern NYC. Of course, the story unfolds in Rice’s typical fashion as a tale related by one character to another, in this case Azriel to a contemporary scholar after all to the book’s events have occurred, and this allows for a good use of the first person POV, another aspect of Rice’s writing she did very well. Through Azriel’s eyes, the ancient world and its sometimes obscure history come vividly to life, a testament to an awesome amount of historical research. Nobody ever accused Anne Rice of not doing her homework. As usual, the author can’t resist a detailed description or pass by an adjective, which is a strength or a weakness of hers depending on the reader. I think the strongest and most compelling parts of the book are the sections dealing with ancient times with its rich world building along with a deep dive into the arcane beliefs of Hebrews and pagan Babylonians. When Azriel wakes up in ‘90s New York City, the story looses momentum with the introduction of some incredibly verbose characters, though when Gregory Belkin, the Messianic leader of the Temple of the Mind of God and the story’s Big Bad, reveals his big plan to remake modern civilization in the manner of a latter day Alexander the Great, the story kicks into a higher gear. It’s a subplot that could have been the main focus of another book. And there is a gratuitous sex scene that reminds the reader that if Anne Rice had written nothing but erotica, she would still have been a success. I found what Rice had to say about faith and God and the mystery of death to be an interesting take and food for thought. Yet, there were times where I didn’t wonder if this story hadn’t started out as another tale of Lestat before Rice decided to switch out her famous vampire for a djinn and go in another direction. Though I prefer her tales of blood suckers, as it is, she wrote a decent standalone historical/fantasy/horror novel that certainly left her fans wanting more.
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0345389417 / 9780345389411
Physical description
432 p.; 4.15 inches
Pages
432