SERVANT OF THE BONES CHAPTER 2
Jul. 29th, 2018 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratMan, I suddenly had some hard nostalgia for Anita Blake? Namely the wereanimals. Don't know why. Also, you know what I thought was a cool detail? It came up in one of the most recent books, pretty sure, that the color of your animal (except with the tigers and born shifters I guess) is determined by that of the wereanimal who infected you. So if a werewolf with a white wolf form infected somebody, their wolf form would be white too. I haven't seen that anywhere else and I think it's neat. I kind of like it better than someone's animal form having their coloration, cuz it means anyone can be anything, you don't HAVE to have a ginger animal form just because you're a redhead, a blonde can have a black one, a black person can have a white one, etc. I dunno, I just think that's cool.
Speaking of that, check out this list:
https://sites.google.com/site/satireknightsnarks/satireknight-specials/satireknight-rants---the-top-ways-anita-blake-pisses-me-off
I do disagree that Anita would fit in on Tumblr, though. Yes, she's quick to call anyone a bigot who disagrees with her, but that wouldn't protect her from everyone else calling her out on her own abundant bullshit. I think she'd get ripped apart pretty quickly, and rightly so. Also, on the exercise thing, I think it's been specified more than once that the vampires and were-animals are using gym equipment that's constructed specifically with their super-strength in mind. Everything else though...right on. And the hatred helped with the nostalgia!
This chapter was hard to get through. It's not BAD but it's very dense, very wordy, and it jumps around a LOT. I guess that makes sense since it's two people talking---it's much more a conversation than Lestat/Quinn was--but the tangents make things zig-zag a lot. And, in typical Rice fashion, there's a lot of very lovely but very distracting, unnecessary details that just bog it down. I definitely don't think that all of said details should be cut---they're lovely, evocative, set a scene, and are part of the Gothic style---just trimmed a wee bit.
It would be inaccurate to say NOTHING relevant gets relayed in this chapter, but I think most of the 25 pages it takes is just padding. That's why this spork took this long. By the way, at the end of this book, Jonathon mentions to us he's not attracted to men. I'd like you to keep that in mind when you read certain lines.
SERVANT OF THE BONES CHAPTER 2
Azriel says he doesn't remember Jerusalem, because he wasn't born there. His mother was carried off as a child by Nebuchadnezzar, along with their whole family, and so he was born a Jew in Babylon. They are a rich family and a large one, made mostly of scribes and academics, with the occasional dancer, singer, court page, or prophet.
He says that "Every day of my life I wept for Jerusalem" and recites lines from a song, and says every night they prayed to the Lord to return them to their land. "But what I'm trying to say is that Babylon was my whole life" Wait, what? That....that transition doesn't work. You can't talk about weeping for Jerusalem and then claim what you're trying to say is Babylon was your whole life. Maybe "I wept for Jerusalem yet Babylon was my whole life" or "but Babylon was my whole life" but saying "blah blah Jerusalem blah blah so what I'm saying is Babylon was my whole life" does not flow. But anyway, he knew all the gods and songs of Babylon in addition to Jewish stuff. Which makes sense, I mean, he was born and raised there.
He asks Jonathan to let him talk about Babylon in general for a bit, and Jonathon says sure, except because they're Rice characters they have to say it like this:
Az: "Let me sing the song of Babylon in a strange land. I am not pleasing in the eyes of the Lord or I wouldn't be here, so I think now I can sing the songs I want, what do you think?"
Jon: "I want to hear it. Shape it the way you would. You don't want to be careful with your language, do you? Are you talking to the Lord God now, or are you simply telling your tale?"
Az: "Good question. I'm talking to you so that you will tell the story for me in my words. Yes. I'll rave and cry, blaspheme when I want. I'll let my words come in a torrent. They always did, you know. Keep Azriel quiet was a family obsession."
Azriel laughs at his own remark, and Jon thinks about/describes this laugh for a sentence than takes three lines. Azriel asks if his laugh surprises Jon, and spends a paragraph talking about how ghosts and angels laugh, that "ghosts are famous for laughing" and "Laughter is the sound of Heaven. I think, I believe, I don't know."
Jon suggests maybe Az feels closer to Heaven when he laughs, Az says maybe so. Jon obsesses about Az's mouth and how beautiful it is for an entire small paragraph. Az addresses him as "his scholar" and says he's read all his books, that "your students love you" yet the old Hasidim are "shocked" by his "biblical studies." Jon says "They ignore me. I don't exist for the Hasidim" and says that his mother was a Hasid so maybe that will help "understanding between us" and I'm not sure if he means him and Az or him and the Hasidim? Jon has also decided he likes Azriel.
Azriel then talks about Babylon, how "the tyrant Saddamn Hussein" has restored its walls and "your archeologist, Koldewey" re-created the Ishtar gates and how it made him weep but even if he walked the restored Processional Way, it would only be a "taste" of what Babylon was. There's some lovely mention of glazed blue brick, gardens everywhere, and the gleaming gold dragons of Marduk. He says they were told that the god Marduk built the city with his own hands, and "we believed it". He says that everyone had a personal god in Babylon ways, and that Azriel practiced this as well, adopting Marduk as his personal god. He brought home a little gold statue of Marduk and caused an "uproar" in his home, but his dad settled things down by saying it's just a "toy" and that when Azriel is done playing with it, he can sell it or break it, but you can't break "our God" because he isn't in stone or precious metals, nor does he have a temple. "He is above such things."
He then explains a bit, presumably for readers who aren't familiar with the concept, how a personal god is rather like the concept of a guardian angel. This segues into how he has never found a people as similiar to Babylonians and Sumerians as modern Americans are. However, it's not in the condemning way that, say, a Christian preacher might liken modern America to Babylon, but more in how people weren't "slaves" to their gods, how "commerce was everything" yet people believed in luck and astrology, how they talked about demons in the same way Americans talk of things like "negative thinking" and "bad self-image". I don't think believing in astrology and demons was so unique to the Babylonians that he could never have found it among another civilization in his lengthy existence, but I guess I'm not the centuries-old ghost-genii here.
Anyway, he prays to his statue, makes it little offerings, and after awhile, Marduk starts casually chatting with him. Curiously, Marduk calls him "Big Brother" which is a very odd thing, I think, for a god to be calling his mortal devotee. Especially since Azriel was only "nearly nine" at this time.
Marduk likes to tease Azriel about Yahweh and how he spent 40 years unable to lead the Jews out of a desert and how he lived in a tent, but when Azriel suggests that Marduk tell Yahweh this himself, Marduk says he doesn't dare since "Nobody can look at the face of your god and live" and fears Yahweh would become a pillar of fire and smash his temple and then he'd end up being the one carried in a tent.
So, non-Christian gods apparently exist, but are scared shitless of the Abrahamic God despite also making fun of Him.
He says it wasn't til he was eleven that he realized other people's gods didn't talk to them. Also sometimes Marduk had ideas, like suggesting they go to the marketplace. Jon asks if the statue talked to him and he carried it with him, Azriel explains that while the incense and such is put before the statue, the god himself is just kinda with you all the time. He also says he sometimes got mad and cursed at Marduk when his prayers weren't answered or something went wrong, explaining this was a common thing that Babylonians did, and Jonathon compares that to how some Catholics will curse at their chosen saint "but how deep does that conviction go?" Azriel says it is a "alliance" with "several layers" like a braid of many strands, but ultimately the truth is "the gods need us!" Jon asks if Marduk needed him, Az looks forlorn says no, he had all of Babylon, but he did want Azriel's company. "But these feelings, they are incredibly complex."
He then asks Jon "Where are the bones of your father?"
As awkward as that is, it gets even more so when it turns out that Jonathon's parents were killed in the Holocaust, so he has no idea where they are buried, or if their bodies were burned, or what. Azriel says he only asked to point out that Jon probably has superstitions about his parents and would not disturb their bones, Jonathon says he indeed does have such superstitions and he feels this way about the photographs he has of his parents. I feel like they might be talking about Jewish tradition with regards to not disturbing their dead in any way, and thus I don't really think that Rice should be having it referred to as "superstitions" by two Jewish characters. But, maybe modern Jewish people do see it as that? I don't know.
Azriel says he wants to show Jon something, asks where his coat is, gets a little plastic pocket out of it, mentions how he loves plastic because it keeps things so pure and clean. He pulls out from it a photo that appears to be Gregory Belkin, but with "the long beard and and forelocks and the silk black hat of the Hasidim." Jon is puzzled. Azriel says "I was made to destroy" yet "the beautiful Hebrew word before so many of the old Psalms" is "Do Not Destroy."
Azriel smiles, his eyes fill with tears, and Jonathon feels "the most sudden overwhelming emotion" but he doesn't know what from. He starts thinking of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov and thinks for a paragraph about how he must be dying and he's just imagining how he is talking to this "beautiful young man with curling black hair like the carvings on the stones of Mesopotamia in the British Museums, those stately kings never feline like the Pharaohs, but with hair that was almost sexual on their faces, dark hair, hair as thick as the hair around their balls must of been."
...that's a heckuva way to end a passage there. Now I know what that one reviewer on Goodreads was saying about how they felt like they'd wandered into someone's erotic fantasy about Antonio Banderas. No seriously, that's what one review said for this book!
He looks at Azriel who is "obviously" reading his emotions or touching his heart or listening to his thoughts, and then realizes "he had done a trick for me" and is now clad in a red velvet tunic, pants, and slippers. He says "You're not dreaming, Jonathan Ben Isaac, I'm here."
Jon thinks about his curling hair like the kings on tablets and his mustache and his cherubic mouth. Dear god, this man is fixated on Azriel's mouth. And how cherubic it is. Literally a paragraph about this mouth. They talk about how Azriel changes like this, Azriel claims that science will one day be able to do the same thing and he's just controlling/summoning particles. As I said in the Blackwood spork, I hate when Rice tries to make this stuff sound "scientific" it just seems so obvious she doesn't know what she's talking about but wants to seem like she does and like...I don't know why? Really, what's wrong with magic just being magic? I'm not opposed to scientific explanations for magic in supernatural fiction, it's just that Rice doesn't really do it well and I think she'd be better served with making it a fantastic mystery. I think she's much better at that kind of thing.
Azriel also gives a fancy, fancy speech to show how he would summon clothes back in the day:
"From the living and the dead, from the raw earth and from that which is forged and refined, woven, and treasured, come to me, tinier than grains of sand, and without sound, unnoticed, hurting no one, at your greatest speed, penetrating whatever barriers that surround me that you must and clothe me in red velvet, soft garments the color of rubies. See these clothes in my mind, come."
Jon is "mesmerized" by the new clothes and how "regal" Azriel seems so that he can't speak. Azriel randomly beings singing a Hebrew Psalm about Babylon in a low voice. Jon thinks about his parents, if it was snowing in Poland, if they were buried or cremated, and if Azriel could call together the ashes of his parents but it is a "horrible, blasphemous thought."
I guess Azriel can read minds (I think it's a convenient way for Rice to have her characters "just know" these things) because he says that was the point he's trying to make, that Jon believes things yet at the same time does not believe them. Jon thinks about that "cherubic mouth" some more. Azriel says he indeed can't bring Jon's parents back to life, rather vehemently--"I can't do that!" So yeah, he can read minds.
Azriel says that the parents of the Belkin brother perished in the Holocaust too, and Gregory became a "madman" while his brother became "a holy man, a saint, zaddik" and that Jonathon became a scholar and teacher "with a gentle gift for making students understand."
They go back to Azriel's past, and Az spends a page explaining how his family were rich scholars, and had been allowed to take with them many wagons of fine furniture and given a fine house when they were brought to Babylon, how it's always the soldiers who are killed and scholars who are brought. Also that other countries, like Egypt, would have sucked a lot more to be than Babylon.
He says that by the time he was eleven he had been to " the Temple itself, a page, as many a rich Hebrew boy was, and had seen the great statue of Marduk" which he says looked more like himself than it did his little Marduk statue. He also saw the statue smile, and it spoke to him and asked how he likes his house. There's mention of women who spend the night with the god. The priests catch on to something between Marduk and Azriel and ask him about it, but he doesn't want to say because even though Hebrews are treated well in Babylon, the priests are still in service to gods other than Yahweh, plus Azriel just plain doesn't trust them. He does not say why, but surprise, he will turn out to be right! But the priest says he saw the god smiling at Az, Az says he saw it too, and "the priest was quaking" and then Az just forgets about this for years but he believes now it might have been the moment that "my fate was sealed"
"Marduk started talking to me all the time then" and then there's a tangent about how no one knows where the Sumerians come from and the same is true for the Jews and there are lost books of the Bible in which Yahweh defeats the Leviathan. These tangents altogether take a page. Then there's another full-page tangent about the king following Nebuchadnezzar, who is Nabodinus and he was a scholar but he loved the god Sin rather than Marduk, the city's god, so everybody hated him, and if they could call him up now as the Witch of Endor called up the dead prophet Samuel then perhaps he could tells us "wondrous things" but maybe he has gone into the "light" and "mounted the stairs" by now.
The next two pages are Azriel talking about how fancy his family house in the "rich Hebrew corner" where they lived was, the gorgeous courtyards, the beautiful brickwork, the gardens with fountains, then about how the Jews didn't have an official temple of their own because they were one day going to go home to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of Solomon so they weren't going to make a lesser little streetside temple here in Babylon, so they just gather in private homes for prayers and by the way his family has been rich merchants for nine generations so stories about nomad life and Moses and being in the desert for forty years didn't "make sense" to them. Azriel was also often told that he had "found favor in the eyes of Yahweh, though what this meant nobody was certain."
...why not ask the people saying it then? Surely THEY know what they meant if they're saying it so often?
"I guess they all knew in a way that I could see farther than others, look into their souls, you know, like a zaddik, a saint"
Wait, he can WHAT?! You could do this as a kid and you're just mentioning it NOW, Azriel?! Maybe that's why gods talk to you!
He talks about how he was happy, so happy his friends even teased him for being too happy, how things were "easy for me", how he had a "real Babylonian education" which did include having the daylights beat out of them if they were late "but usually it was easy for me". He recounts his lessons about writing Sumerian, and then spends two pages retelling the Epic of Gilgamesh, and how it doesn't make much sense---namely, why do wild beasts care so much that a man spent the night with a harlot?--unless it is "a bizarre code. Everything is code, is it not?"
Jon agrees, and asks him to go on with the story. Azriel takes about another page to do so. He then talks about kings, a category in which he includes Gregory Belkin, and how "sanity must be rare" in them and Gregory had "the same isolation and terrible weakness" as many kings whose faces he has looked into. He then says that all the evil he did as the Servant of the Bones doesn't matter now, except that "Every time I killed a human life, I destroyed a universe, did I not?" to which Jon responses that "Perhaps, or perhaps you sent the evil flame home to be cleansed in the flame of God."
Oh please, Rice, please, not another "it's ok for my supernatural protag to kill as he pleases because they were BAD people!" please!
Azriel goes on, talking about how he became a Court page who was useful to the King's regent, Belshazzar, who nobody liked and "wasn't destined to be loved." Azriel, meanwhile, has become acquainted with the "wise men" of the King's palace, and he realizes that they know Marduk speaks to him, they can hear it sometimes too. It's not said how he figures this out. I guess he just does. Azriel, now nineteen and unaware he has very little time left to live, asks Marduk how they hear it when Marduk speaks to him, to which Marduk explains that they are seers and sorcerers who, like the Hebrew prophets and like Azriel himself, can sense spirits. Marduk also warns him to beware because "these men know your powers". Marduk sounds "dejected" which Azriel had never heard before. He also said this in Sumerian, and I'm not sure why that's specified.
Azriel scoffs "what powers, you are the god" Um, those powers you mentioned about being able to SEE SOMEONE'S SOUL? That you just drop in ONE SENTENCE and then don't explain at all? I think this is yet another way for Rice to have her characters just automatically know everything about people, and know who's a good or bad guy, except that given what's gonna happen to him, you'd think he'd have had a heads up from that.
Azriel goes home, and Marduk is in his room. A real physical manifestation of Marduk. He is a man of Az's height, covered in gold, with curly hair and beard of living gold, and his eyes are "browner than mine, that is paler, with more yellow"
....does Anne Rice know what the word "brown" means? Maybe Azriel has black eyes. That's the only way that his eyes being yellower and paler could also make them browner. He also looks a good deal like Azriel, except his features make him look less "mischievous or ferocious" than Azriel did "by nature". I guess Az has Resting Bitch Face.
Marduk kisses him on both cheeks. Az wants to embrace him. Marduk, reading his mind, invites him to do it but warns that while they touch, others will be able to see him as well. So Azriel hugs him and of course not one but THREE people somehow see this---the doorkeeper, one of Az's sisters, and a Hebrew elder who later came at Az with his staff saying he had seen him "with a devil or an angel, and he did not know which" Okay so, I know there are devils and angels in the Old Testament, I am pretty sure they exist in Judaism (I think?), but would ancient Babylonian Jews have had those concepts in the exact same ways we do? I...have no idea, but I've heard that Rice, for all her flaws, does do historical research pretty well, so maybe.
And Azriel's "beloved, sweet, good-hearted father" to whom he has already told of this embrace and encounter, explains to the Hebrew elder that it was Marduk. Azriel then launches in to claiming his father never, never meant to hurt him, and says his father was his little brother. This is an odd statement, so he explains that their relationship was like that of brothers, with Azriel being the older brother to his own father, who was the baby of the family, "the little Benjamin" and "as eldest son I bossed him a bit" and that they were close. And thus he had explained to him, drunk with him at a tavern one night, how Marduk had been talking to him for years. His father at first laughs, is then worried, then "engrossed." Azriel reflects how he never should have told his father, how stupid it was of him. This will make sense later when we find out what happened to him.
Azriel then talks about how his family were rich merchants (YES, WE KNOW THEY ARE RICH, WE UNDERSTAND THAT, DEAR GOD) and scribes, and stuff about their library of texts and all their scrolls about "Joseph and Moses and Egypt and so forth". He says he used to sing as he wrote Psalms, and it irritated his uncle despite the man being deaf. "But I was one for cutting up all the time. But I'm giving the wrong impression. I wasn't really bad." Jon says he knows what kind of man Azriel was and is, to which Az replies that maybe he does, and that if Jon had thought him bad he would have thrown him out in the snow.
...I feel like a very sick 65 year old man might have some trouble with that. Especially against a...whatever Azriel is.
Azriel looks at Jon, Jon thinks about how he doesn't look "ferocious" and though his brows are low and thick, but his eyes are big enough to be pretty. Jon feels drawn to him and wants to hear everything he has to say, and Jon wonders if he even could throw him out in the snow. Azriel reads his mind and says that though he has taken many lives, he would never harm a man like Jonathan and the men he killed were assassins and that has been his "code" ever since "came to myself". He explains that "In my early days as the Servant of the Bones, as the bitter angry ghost for the powerful sorcerer, I killed because it was the Master's will and I thought I had to do it. I thought the man who called me up could control me, and I did his bidding, until the moment came when I suddenly realized that I did not have to be a slave forever" and that he could still be "pleasing to God" and "that somehow all could come and be united once more in one figure! Ah!"
I really hope he's very much condensing here---I'm sure he is---because it sounds like he was so sure that these evil masters could control him that he never even tried to fight them, so that it wasn't until when he did that he realized oh they can't. Which...doesn't paint a very flattering picture of Azriel. Like that's stupid at best, to not even try to see if he can fight the control...and at worst, apathetic to the point of evil, since it means he didn't even bother trying to resist orders to murder innocents. I guess we'll find out!
Azriel starts lamenting again about his dad and "how it hurt him what he finally did" and how he said "Azriel, who of all my sons loves me as you do? No one else can ever forgive me for this but you!"
WOW, AZRIEL'S DAD WAS AN ASSHOLE
Az says he's jumping ahead though and "will die soon enough" in the story. He asks Jon to forgive him, saying he didn't recall this for thousands of years and "I was a bitter ghost without memory" and that now it has all come back and "I pour it out to you in tears" to which Jon responds "Give me your tears, your trust, and your hurt. I won't fail you." Azriel gushes a bit over what a good man Jon is, and how rare is a good man who will talk to someone who is evil, saying that the Rebbe of the Hasidim "turned his back on me. He was too good to talk to the Servant of the Bones." Jon says "We are all Jews, and there are Jews, and there are Jews."
I mean, maybe the Rebbe didn't talk to you because you ramble and meander around the point and talk for paragraphs, Azriel. Genii spirit or not, I'd get bored pretty quick of that.
They also say this, which as a non-Jew I really have no context for:
Az: "Yes, and now there are Isarelis, who would be Maccabees! And there are the Hasidim."
Jon: "And other Orthodox, and some "reformed" and so on it goes. Let's go back to your time."
Azriel talks more about his family, who by the way were rich merchants, and four paragraphs about that and the fancy beautiful things (jewels, silk, silver, books, honey) that they sold. And how this trade gave their house a "sumptuous quality" and how this "richness colored my father's values as much as it did mine."
...oh no, are we going to get Greedy Jews? Is that's what's going to happen here?
Azriel says that what he means by this is that "the house was always full of merchandise passing through" so sometimes they'd have a gorgeous statue of Ishtar here or beautiful furniture from Egypt there, and so on. He spends another paragraph on this. What Jon gets from it is "You grew up on beauty" and Azriel says yes, and that he also grew up with love, the love of his brothers and sisters and uncles and father. That "Even the prophet Azarel said to me, "Yahweh looks at you with love." So did the witch Asenath. Ah, such love."
...huh, I notice he doesn't mention his mother here. In fact, he didn't mention her at all so far, except at the beginning when he said she was carried off to Babylon from Jerusalem. Weird. I guess Azriel is a Disney Princess.
The chapter ends with a paragraph of Jon thinking about how gorgeous Azriel is "resplendent in the red velvet, hair glossy and natural, and the pure skin of his young man's cheeks as soft as a girl's I suppose. I must be getting old. Because young men look to me now as beautiful as girls. Not that I desire them. It's only that life itself is lush."
APPARENTLY RICE THINKS THAT MEN JUST GET HOT FOR YOUNG MEN WHEN THEY GET OLD?!
LIKE SHE THINKS THAT'S A PART OF THE MALE AGING PROCESS?!
Absurd as that is, I'm weirdly not that surprised.
So, that's the second chapter. There's nothing really cringey, problematic, amusing, or bad in it (besides the annoying focus on Azriel's mouth, I have half a mind to count how many times the word "cherubic" appears, and how many times his family's wealth is mentioned) It's just...long. But at least the tangents and the jumping around are part of an actual conversation between two characters, there's actual back and forth between Azriel and Jonathon. They're talking, it's not just a massive monologue like with Quinn.
While very different from the usual Ricean hero in physical terms, Azriel does hit on two very typical traits for one---he's a young rich man who is Special in some way he didn't earn, he just is. Now, that's not an irredeemable trait. Buffy, Sailor Moon, and Harry Potter are all Chosen Ones whose specialness was thrust on them through no effort of their own. But they all end up (in my opinion) proving themselves worthy of this, and worthy of the audience's interest through what they do, who they are, how they develop, etc. Same for most Western comic book superheroes, who usually didn't get their powers on purpose. I'll always prefer someone who actively achieves their Specialness versus someone who just has it somehow, but it's not a deal-breaker. Hell, I'm a huge Sailor Moon fan and I like Wonder Woman a lot too, not to mention I'm an X-Men freak and ALL of them were born with their powers! But, their powers and Specialness and being a Chosen One isn't why I think most people like Wonder Woman or Sailor Moon or Harry Potter or Buffy or any other example you can think of.
So, is Azriel like Buffy or Harry or so on? Or is he more like Anita, with his Specialness being used as a lazy substitute for doing things and being interesting? We don't know yet! I don't remember! And I'm gonna make myself NOT be pessimistic just because it's Anne Rice. Because I know she can do better than LKH. If I had to make a bet...I think he has potential to be better than Anita in this regard, but I don't think he'll be as good at it as the positive examples I gave. But, if it comes out dramatically better OR worse, at least I'll have stuff to say!
Speaking of that, check out this list:
https://sites.google.com/site/satireknightsnarks/satireknight-specials/satireknight-rants---the-top-ways-anita-blake-pisses-me-off
I do disagree that Anita would fit in on Tumblr, though. Yes, she's quick to call anyone a bigot who disagrees with her, but that wouldn't protect her from everyone else calling her out on her own abundant bullshit. I think she'd get ripped apart pretty quickly, and rightly so. Also, on the exercise thing, I think it's been specified more than once that the vampires and were-animals are using gym equipment that's constructed specifically with their super-strength in mind. Everything else though...right on. And the hatred helped with the nostalgia!
This chapter was hard to get through. It's not BAD but it's very dense, very wordy, and it jumps around a LOT. I guess that makes sense since it's two people talking---it's much more a conversation than Lestat/Quinn was--but the tangents make things zig-zag a lot. And, in typical Rice fashion, there's a lot of very lovely but very distracting, unnecessary details that just bog it down. I definitely don't think that all of said details should be cut---they're lovely, evocative, set a scene, and are part of the Gothic style---just trimmed a wee bit.
It would be inaccurate to say NOTHING relevant gets relayed in this chapter, but I think most of the 25 pages it takes is just padding. That's why this spork took this long. By the way, at the end of this book, Jonathon mentions to us he's not attracted to men. I'd like you to keep that in mind when you read certain lines.
SERVANT OF THE BONES CHAPTER 2
Azriel says he doesn't remember Jerusalem, because he wasn't born there. His mother was carried off as a child by Nebuchadnezzar, along with their whole family, and so he was born a Jew in Babylon. They are a rich family and a large one, made mostly of scribes and academics, with the occasional dancer, singer, court page, or prophet.
He says that "Every day of my life I wept for Jerusalem" and recites lines from a song, and says every night they prayed to the Lord to return them to their land. "But what I'm trying to say is that Babylon was my whole life" Wait, what? That....that transition doesn't work. You can't talk about weeping for Jerusalem and then claim what you're trying to say is Babylon was your whole life. Maybe "I wept for Jerusalem yet Babylon was my whole life" or "but Babylon was my whole life" but saying "blah blah Jerusalem blah blah so what I'm saying is Babylon was my whole life" does not flow. But anyway, he knew all the gods and songs of Babylon in addition to Jewish stuff. Which makes sense, I mean, he was born and raised there.
He asks Jonathan to let him talk about Babylon in general for a bit, and Jonathon says sure, except because they're Rice characters they have to say it like this:
Az: "Let me sing the song of Babylon in a strange land. I am not pleasing in the eyes of the Lord or I wouldn't be here, so I think now I can sing the songs I want, what do you think?"
Jon: "I want to hear it. Shape it the way you would. You don't want to be careful with your language, do you? Are you talking to the Lord God now, or are you simply telling your tale?"
Az: "Good question. I'm talking to you so that you will tell the story for me in my words. Yes. I'll rave and cry, blaspheme when I want. I'll let my words come in a torrent. They always did, you know. Keep Azriel quiet was a family obsession."
Azriel laughs at his own remark, and Jon thinks about/describes this laugh for a sentence than takes three lines. Azriel asks if his laugh surprises Jon, and spends a paragraph talking about how ghosts and angels laugh, that "ghosts are famous for laughing" and "Laughter is the sound of Heaven. I think, I believe, I don't know."
Jon suggests maybe Az feels closer to Heaven when he laughs, Az says maybe so. Jon obsesses about Az's mouth and how beautiful it is for an entire small paragraph. Az addresses him as "his scholar" and says he's read all his books, that "your students love you" yet the old Hasidim are "shocked" by his "biblical studies." Jon says "They ignore me. I don't exist for the Hasidim" and says that his mother was a Hasid so maybe that will help "understanding between us" and I'm not sure if he means him and Az or him and the Hasidim? Jon has also decided he likes Azriel.
Azriel then talks about Babylon, how "the tyrant Saddamn Hussein" has restored its walls and "your archeologist, Koldewey" re-created the Ishtar gates and how it made him weep but even if he walked the restored Processional Way, it would only be a "taste" of what Babylon was. There's some lovely mention of glazed blue brick, gardens everywhere, and the gleaming gold dragons of Marduk. He says they were told that the god Marduk built the city with his own hands, and "we believed it". He says that everyone had a personal god in Babylon ways, and that Azriel practiced this as well, adopting Marduk as his personal god. He brought home a little gold statue of Marduk and caused an "uproar" in his home, but his dad settled things down by saying it's just a "toy" and that when Azriel is done playing with it, he can sell it or break it, but you can't break "our God" because he isn't in stone or precious metals, nor does he have a temple. "He is above such things."
He then explains a bit, presumably for readers who aren't familiar with the concept, how a personal god is rather like the concept of a guardian angel. This segues into how he has never found a people as similiar to Babylonians and Sumerians as modern Americans are. However, it's not in the condemning way that, say, a Christian preacher might liken modern America to Babylon, but more in how people weren't "slaves" to their gods, how "commerce was everything" yet people believed in luck and astrology, how they talked about demons in the same way Americans talk of things like "negative thinking" and "bad self-image". I don't think believing in astrology and demons was so unique to the Babylonians that he could never have found it among another civilization in his lengthy existence, but I guess I'm not the centuries-old ghost-genii here.
Anyway, he prays to his statue, makes it little offerings, and after awhile, Marduk starts casually chatting with him. Curiously, Marduk calls him "Big Brother" which is a very odd thing, I think, for a god to be calling his mortal devotee. Especially since Azriel was only "nearly nine" at this time.
Marduk likes to tease Azriel about Yahweh and how he spent 40 years unable to lead the Jews out of a desert and how he lived in a tent, but when Azriel suggests that Marduk tell Yahweh this himself, Marduk says he doesn't dare since "Nobody can look at the face of your god and live" and fears Yahweh would become a pillar of fire and smash his temple and then he'd end up being the one carried in a tent.
So, non-Christian gods apparently exist, but are scared shitless of the Abrahamic God despite also making fun of Him.
He says it wasn't til he was eleven that he realized other people's gods didn't talk to them. Also sometimes Marduk had ideas, like suggesting they go to the marketplace. Jon asks if the statue talked to him and he carried it with him, Azriel explains that while the incense and such is put before the statue, the god himself is just kinda with you all the time. He also says he sometimes got mad and cursed at Marduk when his prayers weren't answered or something went wrong, explaining this was a common thing that Babylonians did, and Jonathon compares that to how some Catholics will curse at their chosen saint "but how deep does that conviction go?" Azriel says it is a "alliance" with "several layers" like a braid of many strands, but ultimately the truth is "the gods need us!" Jon asks if Marduk needed him, Az looks forlorn says no, he had all of Babylon, but he did want Azriel's company. "But these feelings, they are incredibly complex."
He then asks Jon "Where are the bones of your father?"
As awkward as that is, it gets even more so when it turns out that Jonathon's parents were killed in the Holocaust, so he has no idea where they are buried, or if their bodies were burned, or what. Azriel says he only asked to point out that Jon probably has superstitions about his parents and would not disturb their bones, Jonathon says he indeed does have such superstitions and he feels this way about the photographs he has of his parents. I feel like they might be talking about Jewish tradition with regards to not disturbing their dead in any way, and thus I don't really think that Rice should be having it referred to as "superstitions" by two Jewish characters. But, maybe modern Jewish people do see it as that? I don't know.
Azriel says he wants to show Jon something, asks where his coat is, gets a little plastic pocket out of it, mentions how he loves plastic because it keeps things so pure and clean. He pulls out from it a photo that appears to be Gregory Belkin, but with "the long beard and and forelocks and the silk black hat of the Hasidim." Jon is puzzled. Azriel says "I was made to destroy" yet "the beautiful Hebrew word before so many of the old Psalms" is "Do Not Destroy."
Azriel smiles, his eyes fill with tears, and Jonathon feels "the most sudden overwhelming emotion" but he doesn't know what from. He starts thinking of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov and thinks for a paragraph about how he must be dying and he's just imagining how he is talking to this "beautiful young man with curling black hair like the carvings on the stones of Mesopotamia in the British Museums, those stately kings never feline like the Pharaohs, but with hair that was almost sexual on their faces, dark hair, hair as thick as the hair around their balls must of been."
...that's a heckuva way to end a passage there. Now I know what that one reviewer on Goodreads was saying about how they felt like they'd wandered into someone's erotic fantasy about Antonio Banderas. No seriously, that's what one review said for this book!
He looks at Azriel who is "obviously" reading his emotions or touching his heart or listening to his thoughts, and then realizes "he had done a trick for me" and is now clad in a red velvet tunic, pants, and slippers. He says "You're not dreaming, Jonathan Ben Isaac, I'm here."
Jon thinks about his curling hair like the kings on tablets and his mustache and his cherubic mouth. Dear god, this man is fixated on Azriel's mouth. And how cherubic it is. Literally a paragraph about this mouth. They talk about how Azriel changes like this, Azriel claims that science will one day be able to do the same thing and he's just controlling/summoning particles. As I said in the Blackwood spork, I hate when Rice tries to make this stuff sound "scientific" it just seems so obvious she doesn't know what she's talking about but wants to seem like she does and like...I don't know why? Really, what's wrong with magic just being magic? I'm not opposed to scientific explanations for magic in supernatural fiction, it's just that Rice doesn't really do it well and I think she'd be better served with making it a fantastic mystery. I think she's much better at that kind of thing.
Azriel also gives a fancy, fancy speech to show how he would summon clothes back in the day:
"From the living and the dead, from the raw earth and from that which is forged and refined, woven, and treasured, come to me, tinier than grains of sand, and without sound, unnoticed, hurting no one, at your greatest speed, penetrating whatever barriers that surround me that you must and clothe me in red velvet, soft garments the color of rubies. See these clothes in my mind, come."
Jon is "mesmerized" by the new clothes and how "regal" Azriel seems so that he can't speak. Azriel randomly beings singing a Hebrew Psalm about Babylon in a low voice. Jon thinks about his parents, if it was snowing in Poland, if they were buried or cremated, and if Azriel could call together the ashes of his parents but it is a "horrible, blasphemous thought."
I guess Azriel can read minds (I think it's a convenient way for Rice to have her characters "just know" these things) because he says that was the point he's trying to make, that Jon believes things yet at the same time does not believe them. Jon thinks about that "cherubic mouth" some more. Azriel says he indeed can't bring Jon's parents back to life, rather vehemently--"I can't do that!" So yeah, he can read minds.
Azriel says that the parents of the Belkin brother perished in the Holocaust too, and Gregory became a "madman" while his brother became "a holy man, a saint, zaddik" and that Jonathon became a scholar and teacher "with a gentle gift for making students understand."
They go back to Azriel's past, and Az spends a page explaining how his family were rich scholars, and had been allowed to take with them many wagons of fine furniture and given a fine house when they were brought to Babylon, how it's always the soldiers who are killed and scholars who are brought. Also that other countries, like Egypt, would have sucked a lot more to be than Babylon.
He says that by the time he was eleven he had been to " the Temple itself, a page, as many a rich Hebrew boy was, and had seen the great statue of Marduk" which he says looked more like himself than it did his little Marduk statue. He also saw the statue smile, and it spoke to him and asked how he likes his house. There's mention of women who spend the night with the god. The priests catch on to something between Marduk and Azriel and ask him about it, but he doesn't want to say because even though Hebrews are treated well in Babylon, the priests are still in service to gods other than Yahweh, plus Azriel just plain doesn't trust them. He does not say why, but surprise, he will turn out to be right! But the priest says he saw the god smiling at Az, Az says he saw it too, and "the priest was quaking" and then Az just forgets about this for years but he believes now it might have been the moment that "my fate was sealed"
"Marduk started talking to me all the time then" and then there's a tangent about how no one knows where the Sumerians come from and the same is true for the Jews and there are lost books of the Bible in which Yahweh defeats the Leviathan. These tangents altogether take a page. Then there's another full-page tangent about the king following Nebuchadnezzar, who is Nabodinus and he was a scholar but he loved the god Sin rather than Marduk, the city's god, so everybody hated him, and if they could call him up now as the Witch of Endor called up the dead prophet Samuel then perhaps he could tells us "wondrous things" but maybe he has gone into the "light" and "mounted the stairs" by now.
The next two pages are Azriel talking about how fancy his family house in the "rich Hebrew corner" where they lived was, the gorgeous courtyards, the beautiful brickwork, the gardens with fountains, then about how the Jews didn't have an official temple of their own because they were one day going to go home to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of Solomon so they weren't going to make a lesser little streetside temple here in Babylon, so they just gather in private homes for prayers and by the way his family has been rich merchants for nine generations so stories about nomad life and Moses and being in the desert for forty years didn't "make sense" to them. Azriel was also often told that he had "found favor in the eyes of Yahweh, though what this meant nobody was certain."
...why not ask the people saying it then? Surely THEY know what they meant if they're saying it so often?
"I guess they all knew in a way that I could see farther than others, look into their souls, you know, like a zaddik, a saint"
Wait, he can WHAT?! You could do this as a kid and you're just mentioning it NOW, Azriel?! Maybe that's why gods talk to you!
He talks about how he was happy, so happy his friends even teased him for being too happy, how things were "easy for me", how he had a "real Babylonian education" which did include having the daylights beat out of them if they were late "but usually it was easy for me". He recounts his lessons about writing Sumerian, and then spends two pages retelling the Epic of Gilgamesh, and how it doesn't make much sense---namely, why do wild beasts care so much that a man spent the night with a harlot?--unless it is "a bizarre code. Everything is code, is it not?"
Jon agrees, and asks him to go on with the story. Azriel takes about another page to do so. He then talks about kings, a category in which he includes Gregory Belkin, and how "sanity must be rare" in them and Gregory had "the same isolation and terrible weakness" as many kings whose faces he has looked into. He then says that all the evil he did as the Servant of the Bones doesn't matter now, except that "Every time I killed a human life, I destroyed a universe, did I not?" to which Jon responses that "Perhaps, or perhaps you sent the evil flame home to be cleansed in the flame of God."
Oh please, Rice, please, not another "it's ok for my supernatural protag to kill as he pleases because they were BAD people!" please!
Azriel goes on, talking about how he became a Court page who was useful to the King's regent, Belshazzar, who nobody liked and "wasn't destined to be loved." Azriel, meanwhile, has become acquainted with the "wise men" of the King's palace, and he realizes that they know Marduk speaks to him, they can hear it sometimes too. It's not said how he figures this out. I guess he just does. Azriel, now nineteen and unaware he has very little time left to live, asks Marduk how they hear it when Marduk speaks to him, to which Marduk explains that they are seers and sorcerers who, like the Hebrew prophets and like Azriel himself, can sense spirits. Marduk also warns him to beware because "these men know your powers". Marduk sounds "dejected" which Azriel had never heard before. He also said this in Sumerian, and I'm not sure why that's specified.
Azriel scoffs "what powers, you are the god" Um, those powers you mentioned about being able to SEE SOMEONE'S SOUL? That you just drop in ONE SENTENCE and then don't explain at all? I think this is yet another way for Rice to have her characters just automatically know everything about people, and know who's a good or bad guy, except that given what's gonna happen to him, you'd think he'd have had a heads up from that.
Azriel goes home, and Marduk is in his room. A real physical manifestation of Marduk. He is a man of Az's height, covered in gold, with curly hair and beard of living gold, and his eyes are "browner than mine, that is paler, with more yellow"
....does Anne Rice know what the word "brown" means? Maybe Azriel has black eyes. That's the only way that his eyes being yellower and paler could also make them browner. He also looks a good deal like Azriel, except his features make him look less "mischievous or ferocious" than Azriel did "by nature". I guess Az has Resting Bitch Face.
Marduk kisses him on both cheeks. Az wants to embrace him. Marduk, reading his mind, invites him to do it but warns that while they touch, others will be able to see him as well. So Azriel hugs him and of course not one but THREE people somehow see this---the doorkeeper, one of Az's sisters, and a Hebrew elder who later came at Az with his staff saying he had seen him "with a devil or an angel, and he did not know which" Okay so, I know there are devils and angels in the Old Testament, I am pretty sure they exist in Judaism (I think?), but would ancient Babylonian Jews have had those concepts in the exact same ways we do? I...have no idea, but I've heard that Rice, for all her flaws, does do historical research pretty well, so maybe.
And Azriel's "beloved, sweet, good-hearted father" to whom he has already told of this embrace and encounter, explains to the Hebrew elder that it was Marduk. Azriel then launches in to claiming his father never, never meant to hurt him, and says his father was his little brother. This is an odd statement, so he explains that their relationship was like that of brothers, with Azriel being the older brother to his own father, who was the baby of the family, "the little Benjamin" and "as eldest son I bossed him a bit" and that they were close. And thus he had explained to him, drunk with him at a tavern one night, how Marduk had been talking to him for years. His father at first laughs, is then worried, then "engrossed." Azriel reflects how he never should have told his father, how stupid it was of him. This will make sense later when we find out what happened to him.
Azriel then talks about how his family were rich merchants (YES, WE KNOW THEY ARE RICH, WE UNDERSTAND THAT, DEAR GOD) and scribes, and stuff about their library of texts and all their scrolls about "Joseph and Moses and Egypt and so forth". He says he used to sing as he wrote Psalms, and it irritated his uncle despite the man being deaf. "But I was one for cutting up all the time. But I'm giving the wrong impression. I wasn't really bad." Jon says he knows what kind of man Azriel was and is, to which Az replies that maybe he does, and that if Jon had thought him bad he would have thrown him out in the snow.
...I feel like a very sick 65 year old man might have some trouble with that. Especially against a...whatever Azriel is.
Azriel looks at Jon, Jon thinks about how he doesn't look "ferocious" and though his brows are low and thick, but his eyes are big enough to be pretty. Jon feels drawn to him and wants to hear everything he has to say, and Jon wonders if he even could throw him out in the snow. Azriel reads his mind and says that though he has taken many lives, he would never harm a man like Jonathan and the men he killed were assassins and that has been his "code" ever since "came to myself". He explains that "In my early days as the Servant of the Bones, as the bitter angry ghost for the powerful sorcerer, I killed because it was the Master's will and I thought I had to do it. I thought the man who called me up could control me, and I did his bidding, until the moment came when I suddenly realized that I did not have to be a slave forever" and that he could still be "pleasing to God" and "that somehow all could come and be united once more in one figure! Ah!"
I really hope he's very much condensing here---I'm sure he is---because it sounds like he was so sure that these evil masters could control him that he never even tried to fight them, so that it wasn't until when he did that he realized oh they can't. Which...doesn't paint a very flattering picture of Azriel. Like that's stupid at best, to not even try to see if he can fight the control...and at worst, apathetic to the point of evil, since it means he didn't even bother trying to resist orders to murder innocents. I guess we'll find out!
Azriel starts lamenting again about his dad and "how it hurt him what he finally did" and how he said "Azriel, who of all my sons loves me as you do? No one else can ever forgive me for this but you!"
WOW, AZRIEL'S DAD WAS AN ASSHOLE
Az says he's jumping ahead though and "will die soon enough" in the story. He asks Jon to forgive him, saying he didn't recall this for thousands of years and "I was a bitter ghost without memory" and that now it has all come back and "I pour it out to you in tears" to which Jon responds "Give me your tears, your trust, and your hurt. I won't fail you." Azriel gushes a bit over what a good man Jon is, and how rare is a good man who will talk to someone who is evil, saying that the Rebbe of the Hasidim "turned his back on me. He was too good to talk to the Servant of the Bones." Jon says "We are all Jews, and there are Jews, and there are Jews."
I mean, maybe the Rebbe didn't talk to you because you ramble and meander around the point and talk for paragraphs, Azriel. Genii spirit or not, I'd get bored pretty quick of that.
They also say this, which as a non-Jew I really have no context for:
Az: "Yes, and now there are Isarelis, who would be Maccabees! And there are the Hasidim."
Jon: "And other Orthodox, and some "reformed" and so on it goes. Let's go back to your time."
Azriel talks more about his family, who by the way were rich merchants, and four paragraphs about that and the fancy beautiful things (jewels, silk, silver, books, honey) that they sold. And how this trade gave their house a "sumptuous quality" and how this "richness colored my father's values as much as it did mine."
...oh no, are we going to get Greedy Jews? Is that's what's going to happen here?
Azriel says that what he means by this is that "the house was always full of merchandise passing through" so sometimes they'd have a gorgeous statue of Ishtar here or beautiful furniture from Egypt there, and so on. He spends another paragraph on this. What Jon gets from it is "You grew up on beauty" and Azriel says yes, and that he also grew up with love, the love of his brothers and sisters and uncles and father. That "Even the prophet Azarel said to me, "Yahweh looks at you with love." So did the witch Asenath. Ah, such love."
...huh, I notice he doesn't mention his mother here. In fact, he didn't mention her at all so far, except at the beginning when he said she was carried off to Babylon from Jerusalem. Weird. I guess Azriel is a Disney Princess.
The chapter ends with a paragraph of Jon thinking about how gorgeous Azriel is "resplendent in the red velvet, hair glossy and natural, and the pure skin of his young man's cheeks as soft as a girl's I suppose. I must be getting old. Because young men look to me now as beautiful as girls. Not that I desire them. It's only that life itself is lush."
APPARENTLY RICE THINKS THAT MEN JUST GET HOT FOR YOUNG MEN WHEN THEY GET OLD?!
LIKE SHE THINKS THAT'S A PART OF THE MALE AGING PROCESS?!
Absurd as that is, I'm weirdly not that surprised.
So, that's the second chapter. There's nothing really cringey, problematic, amusing, or bad in it (besides the annoying focus on Azriel's mouth, I have half a mind to count how many times the word "cherubic" appears, and how many times his family's wealth is mentioned) It's just...long. But at least the tangents and the jumping around are part of an actual conversation between two characters, there's actual back and forth between Azriel and Jonathon. They're talking, it's not just a massive monologue like with Quinn.
While very different from the usual Ricean hero in physical terms, Azriel does hit on two very typical traits for one---he's a young rich man who is Special in some way he didn't earn, he just is. Now, that's not an irredeemable trait. Buffy, Sailor Moon, and Harry Potter are all Chosen Ones whose specialness was thrust on them through no effort of their own. But they all end up (in my opinion) proving themselves worthy of this, and worthy of the audience's interest through what they do, who they are, how they develop, etc. Same for most Western comic book superheroes, who usually didn't get their powers on purpose. I'll always prefer someone who actively achieves their Specialness versus someone who just has it somehow, but it's not a deal-breaker. Hell, I'm a huge Sailor Moon fan and I like Wonder Woman a lot too, not to mention I'm an X-Men freak and ALL of them were born with their powers! But, their powers and Specialness and being a Chosen One isn't why I think most people like Wonder Woman or Sailor Moon or Harry Potter or Buffy or any other example you can think of.
So, is Azriel like Buffy or Harry or so on? Or is he more like Anita, with his Specialness being used as a lazy substitute for doing things and being interesting? We don't know yet! I don't remember! And I'm gonna make myself NOT be pessimistic just because it's Anne Rice. Because I know she can do better than LKH. If I had to make a bet...I think he has potential to be better than Anita in this regard, but I don't think he'll be as good at it as the positive examples I gave. But, if it comes out dramatically better OR worse, at least I'll have stuff to say!
