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Renae DeLiz

Servant Of The Bones Paperback – 7 Aug. 1997

by Anne Rice (Author)

41 ratings

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SERVANT OF THE BONES is Anne Rice's new electrifying novel, with a hero as mesmerising, seductive and ambivalent as the vampire Lestat. Azriel is a restless Jewish spirit, born almost 2500 years ago in Babylon, who can be called forth by whoever holds and understands the arcane mystery of the casket of golden bones he is tied to. Caught between heaven and earth, Azriel is forced to bear witness to the long and troubled history of Western civilisation, from the household of an ancient Greek philosopher and the deathbed of Alexander the Great, to the Mongolian Steppes and fourteenth century Strasbourg, where Jews were made scapegoats for the Black Death. And finally in the present, he is summoned to witness and avenge a brutal murder on Fifth Avenue. The dead woman is Esther, step-daughter of Gregory Belkin, fanatical messianic leader of a worldwide cult, the Temple of the Mind. Belkin is known to be the son of Holocaust victims, but he has a secret history which binds Azriel's fate to his. SERVANT OF THE BONES is as rich and terrifying, as sensual and violent as any novel by Anne Rice - an enthralling epic which conjures up more than two thousand years of Jewish history and penetrates the unfolding mysteries of evil, redemption, life and death.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Arrow
Publication date

7 Aug. 1997
Reading age

Baby and up
Dimensions

11 x 2.5 x 17.8 cm
ISBN-10

0099184427
ISBN-13

978-0099184423
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Product description

About the Author

Anne Rice is the author of more than thirty internationally bestselling books including the Mayfair Witches sequence, Songs of the Seraphim and the Wolf Gift Chronicles. The phenomenon that became the Vampire Chronicles began with Interview with the Vampire in 1976, later made into a film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and culminated with Blood Canticle in 2003. Prince Lestat, published in 2014, and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, published in 2016, were the first new Vampire Chronicle novels for over a decade. Anne Rice lives in California.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arrow; New Ed edition (7 Aug. 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099184427
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099184423
Reading age ‏ : ‎ Baby and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 11 x 2.5 x 17.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 174,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 703 in Contemporary Horror
- 1,012 in Ghost Horror
- 1,271 in Horror Thrillers

Customer reviews:
41 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		71%
4 star		9%
3 star		8%
2 star		5%
1 star		7%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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Jaste

Azriel, our hero, is telling his story to Jonathan, a history professor

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 February 2015

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The first 50 or so pages were a little slow, but then I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. Definitely not a light read. It's about a man in ancient middle east who ends up being used in a ceremony to replace a god--they paint his body with "gold" and let it harden to make him a statue. Before the gold killed him, he was burnt alive and his spirit remained with his golden bones to be controlled as a killing spirit by whoever figured out how to release his spirit from the bones. It ends up being about his transition from being controlled by the bones to controlling them himself and learning to manifest his powers through love and mercy.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 November 2012

Verified Purchase

I loved it the first time I read it, years ago on loan, but couldn't remember who wrote it and wasn't sure of the title even though I remembered the story in great detail. So when I came across it I snapped it up. Then I found another copy in a bag of books someone gave me. I've taken that one to my house in France so that I can read it again whenever the fancy takes me. I re-read favourite books many times and this one fits that category.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2021

Verified Purchase

Can't go wrong with Anne Rice

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2015

Verified Purchase

No complaints whatsoever everything spot on as usual.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2014

Verified Purchase

a fantastic story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 April 2015

Verified Purchase

brilliant book

Helpful

This was an intriguing read though a bit overwrought in places

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 February 2021

It is the story of Azriel, a kind of ghost or demon who was once a mortal man but was transformed. It’s framed in the narrative of him telling his story to an academic and traces his mortal life in the time of Cyrus the Great in Babylon up to the present. Here he gets involved with the leader of a modern day cult, with massive followings and money and power, and his family.

The framing device has been done before by the author, most notably in Interview with the Vampire and I suppose it works here too. Azriel is interesting to read about, very over dramatic in Rice’s usual style, but the change from a pretty happy young man to vengeful spirit is mostly handled well.

I really loved reading about the time in Babylon. I have no idea how accurate it all is but the author has always managed to wrap me up in the time period whenever she delves into the past (which is a lot) and there is no exception here. She manages to make it both seem similar and utterly different which is a good trick to pull off.

The writing is pretty indulgent, with long sentences and lots of descriptions etc. I’m not usually a fan of that and I did find it a bit grating in places, especially at the start, but she does gradually bring you into the dream she’s making and once the story got going properly it wasn’t as bad. There are a few plot holes as well but didn’t take away from my enjoyment too much. Overall a good read but not one of her best. It's also a standalone which is a bonus.

3.5 stars rounded down.

Helpful

Them bones, them bones, them gold bones

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 January 2015

Anne Rice boldly goes where she's gone before in "Servant of the Bones," a flaccid deviation from her Vampire Chronicles. Rice's plot has some raw promise, but it's quickly squandered by the dull characters and meandering, bizarre plot. It would take all of a genii's power to give some life to this story.

A genii arrives at a man's house one night, and relates the story of his life (and afterlife), and a weird tale it is too. Azriel was a young Jewish boy in Babylon, who had the unusual gift of being able to talk to the god Marduk.

He permitted himself to be turned into a living gold statue, a human sacrifice for the sake of the Jews -- but things go horribly wrong when an old witch curses and murders him. Now he is no longer human, but a powerful spirit that isn't an angel or a demon.

Azriel spends centuries sleeping inside his own gold-encrusted bones, occasionally getting woken up to do something for his masters. Then he's suddenly out and about -- and there's no master. He witnesses the murder of a young girl, who recognizes him as "the Servant of the Bones." The angry Azriel is determined to unravel the mystery of why the girl was murdered.

"Servant of the Bones" follows the format of the Vampire Chronicles: an incredibly attractive immortal relates his life story to a listener (who, oddly enough, never seems to need the bathroom during the long oral bio). But the grandeur and richness of her other writings is missing here.

Rice seems to be aware that her plot is too short and thin to be an entire novel. So she stretches it with lots of filler -- current events (no Bill-Clinton worship, please), her late husband's incomprehensible poetry, and endless descriptions of Azriel's skin, hair and eyes. Her usually colorful, sensuous prose is weirdly lifeless and dull here. And the plot is glacially slow.

Most strangely of all, Rice starts playing fast and loose with religion and history. And devout followers of Judaism will probably be grinding their teeth: the faithful are shown as self-righteous, slobbering fanatics, while the hero worships other gods and shares prostitutes with his dad. She bangs readers over the head with her assertions that there were many versions of the Old Testament. And Rice tries to bring Azriel to the present by a story-line about terrorists, murder and a cult, but the present-day story-line feels tacked-on. It's like a supernatural Bond flick.

But it doesn't exactly help that Azriel is not a terribly interesting character at all. Over the centuries he never develops a personality, and his actions seem pretty random. Why is he so besotted with Esther? We never know. The villain is cookie-cutter, and most of the supporting characters (including the narrator) are utterly forgettable.

This story is a complete misfire for Rice, and a bewildering squandering of her talents. Her dull characters and weird views on Old Testament history are only a few of the problems in the turgid, colorless "Servant of the Bones."

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