SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER 3
Aug. 26th, 2018 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratHello friends! This is another long one (only about 15 pages, but feels like 45) in which not too much happens, but there's also just not much to snark. One thing I like about sporking LKH, her writing and content was so bad there was generally a whole lot to pick apart with every page. Plus her chapters were on the short side too, if I remember correctly. This is a huge drag already. That said, my plan for my next book to spork will be another Rice one, either Blood & Gold or, if I get it back from my brother's house by then, Queen of the Damned.
I picked up the first book of Vampire Academy at a used bookstore because it was 75 cents and I am pleasantly surprised by it? I admit, I had some preconceived notions about how it was gonna be since it's YA paranormal romance, but I'm five and a half chapters in and not only is there nothing that thus far bothers me, I'm honestly so impressed that the primary relationship/concern of the heroine is her female best friend? Her bestie is vampire royalty that she's the bodyguard for, and they have this super special empathic bond, and the heroine lets her feed from her even though they know it would be considered super sexual kinky if anyone found out (but it's not sexual with them, just out of necessity, even though it explicitly feels REALLY REALLY GOOD and she gets jealous when she sees her vampire princess bestie feed from a human) and she genuinely cares about her thus far and thinks a lot about her and looks out for her physically and emotionally in a way that goes beyond just "well I'm her guardian so I have to take care of her" sort of way? I'm not expecting the author to spring Surprise Schoolgirl Lesbians on us, both of them chat about how hot guys are and there's already the obvious YA love interest guys introduced that both girls will obviously end up with, but I just genuinely love that there's a real bond between two women (well, girls) in this book that is treated as real and important and given attention to. One thing that has put me off a TON of the paranormal romance/urban fantasy genre is that it always seems to be that the heroine only has positive relationships with men, and all other females are either antagonists or unimportant. Nothing puts me off from a book faster than "all females except me are harpies and bitches" type heroines, especially when the writer (usually a woman herself) sets that up as the objective truth and not just the heroine's personal issues. Other than that, it's nothing really remarkable or great, pretty much so far just high school clique stuff with a sprinkling of supernatural trappings, but I was impressed enough by this aspect to make note of it.
Also, who here knows about the Nagaraja clan from the "Vampire: The Masquerade" setting? I really like the Nagaraja vampires because their need to eat human flesh in addition to blood is just such a great weakness? It's truly monstrous from a cultural taboo standpoint, even if they're just stealing the meat from dead bodies. It's a very difficult weakness to get around too, as you only have so many options to do this without attracting attention, and will probably have to get creative (especially if you can't get a job in a morgue, disposing medical waste, etc.) And finally, it's gross. On an OOC level, it's gross. Drinking blood is something that I think any vampire fan is just inured to after a certain point (in fiction, of course, I think we all agree it'd be a lot nastier irl), especially since it's so easily romanticized and sexualized in vampire fiction. Like how many pictures have you seen of a "sexy" vampire with blood on their mouth? But you can't really do that with BITING CHUNKS OUT OF PEOPLE. Hannibal Lector might have made cannibalism all elegant and classy, but your average Lestat type is gonna look a lot less hot when he goes all The Walking Dead on somebody. It really makes vampirism what it should be, in my opinion---a curse. At the same time, they're not mindless like zombies or the vampires from The Strain, or souless like Buffy vamps, so they can still be, you know, CHARACTERS. Not that some Buffy vamps weren't "characters" even sans soul (Spike, Drusilla, etc) but they did always have to be evil. And I do like evil vampires, I also just like evil ultimately being a choice in the end no matter WHAT you are.
Also, I bet Limyaael would HATE Blackwood Farm:
https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/things-that-really-irritate-limyaael
SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER 3
Jon asks what it was like to roam the beautiful temple. Azriel describes it. He also talks some about clay tablets and how those work. He also says he never saw "the hungry" or a "wretched slave" in Babylon and that "everyone is happy". I'm going to call bullshit and say this is simply because Azriel is sticking to the privileged places where rich boys like him lived, rather than Babylon being the one city ever not to have an underclass of some kind.
He tells how at the time, Cyrus the Persian was "on the march" and "taking Greek cities" so lots of cities were sending their gods to Babylon for protection, which I take to mean statues/idols of said gods. He says that people were very afraid of their gods being stolen, that Marduk himself had been prisoner of another city for 200 years. Jon asks if they ever talked about this, Az says he never asked him. Az goes back to talking about the temples and how he made friends with the "palace crowd" like the eunochs and temple prostitutes and temple slaves and other pages like himself. He says that when it came to "rich hostages like us, rich deportees" the Babylonian policy was to pick out the young men like Azriel to train up in Babylonian ways, and so if they were sent back home or to some unknown province, they would be "good Babylonians, that is, skilled members of the King's loyal service. There were scores of Hebrews at court."
Despite this, some of his uncles were furious that Az and his dad worked in the temple, but he says he and his dad just shrugged and pointed out that they neither worshipped the Babylonian gods nor eat with the Babylonians, nor eat the food their gods have eaten.
"Let me note here, this eating of food. It's still important for Hebrews. No? You don't eat with heathens. You didn't then."
This phrasing feels a lot more like something Rice is making sure the reader knows, than something one Jewish character who expects the other one to just automatically understand, would say. Like, if Azriel is supposed to just presume that Jonathon/modern Jews have this same practice, why is he saying it like that? I dunno, does it read like that to anyone else?
He then talks more about how "as good Hebrews" his family did such and so on traditions surrounding food. Which, again, you gotta wonder why he's explaining to another Jewish person. I get that traditions change over the years, especially SO MANY years, I'm sure Jonathon eats with "heathens"as many modern Jews do, but it just feels so..."As You Know, Bob" like Anne Rice is just DYING to show us how much research she did and can't wait for a more subtle, organic opportunity. Reminds me of LKH in that regard. And then he talks about how they had to be "strong" and what that meant for Hebrews was to be "powerful enough to disperse without being destroyed" and how they had "every intention of returning rich to our homeland"
Rice truly cannot stop talking about being rich in this book. Like there's nothing wrong or obnoxious about that sentence in itself, just on this same very page she reminded us YET AGAIN that Azriel's family was rich, as if we might have forgotten since last chapter. I feel like she doesn't realize that this technically makes Azriel a money-obsessed Jew. Seriously, I'd get fed up with this fucker real fast, wouldn't you? No one likes the dude who can't shut up about how rich his folks are, regardless of religion.
Jon asks if Azriel looked then like he did now. He tells us that this is a 'repeat question" and "one of those soft verbal signals: God gave you all the right gifts, young man."
...tell me again how Jon is meant to be straight and not attracted to Azriel? I don't know what's weirder, Rice's compulsion to make all men bisexual, or her insistence that they're NOT even when she's writing them that way.
Az says yes, that he "wanted to be smooth-faced" but that it "doesn't seem to be my luck." He then says that when sorcerors conjured him as the Servant of the Bones, they would "seldom" wait to see what he really looked like, instead ordering him to be something like a fire that would burn their enemies to cinders. He then says that he looks as he did when he died save for one "salient characteristic" but he doesn't say what that is. Jon doesn't ask, but does ask why he says he was a fool to tell his dad about Marduk. Azriel says "This is the hardest part for me to tell you, Jonathon Ben Isaac" and how he has never told anyone, and asked if God never forgets, if God will forever deny him the Stairway to Heaven.
Jon cautions him "as an older human being, though my soul may be newborn" to not be so sure of Heaven, nor that their God is any more real than Marduk.
So, I cannot emphasize enough how little I know of Judaism. But what I have picked up tangentially from a friend who is converting, this statement sounds more "Jewish" than anything else said yet. I may be totally wrong, but what I've been getting from this friend is that Judaism is a lot more debatable, doubtful, and even at times agnostic than Christianity allows for. Though I'm sure that varies a LOT by sect and culture and so on.
Azriel though, seems to take a more black and white view, since he asks Jon if this means that Jon believes in one but not the other (no, I don't think he believes in Marduk, Az) Jon says he wants to blunt Az's pain of retelling what happened, to blunt his sense of fatality and belief that he is destined for something terrible because of things other people have done.
...buddy, you don't even know what happened yet, nor what Azriel has done. Of course, I'm sure that, just as he claims, he only ever kills Bad People. and there's never the vaguest real questioning on why he gets to decide who that is. It's not that I demand protagonists never kill, or that they must kill innocents for some reason or it's a cop-out, it's just the way that Rice tends to write the whole "only kill the Evil-Doer" ends up being a very childish, shallow solution to what should be a much deeper issue/question. By providing ready-made 2D malicious strawmen that her supernatural heroes can kill without any moral conundrum or hesitation, she gets to take any real moral debate out of it, and have her guys have their cake and eat it too---get to be big bad killers without actually doing anything bad, oh no!
Azriel says that this is wise and generous of Jon, that he himself is "still a fool" in many ways. Jon asks to go back to Babylon and for Azriel to "explain the plot" which I find hilariously meta.
Az goes back to how he was his dad's best friend "and my best friend was Marduk" and he and his dad went out to taverns together, how it was only his father who could have made him do what it took to become the Servant of the Bones. He starts talking about "strange how it all comes together" and about potions, about priests, about how he didn't trust Cyrus and it's all cleverness with Persians. This is meant to be confusing, we as the reader don't know what he's on about yet, but we will.
Eventually anyway.
Jon tells him to takes his time and catch his breath. Azriel goes back to talking about his family, and we finally get some word on his mother. She was a scribe from a family of scribes, and "something of a prophetess, but this had ceased when she had sons." She died of illness when Azriel was young, crying that she would not live to see Yahweh return them to Zion, and Az's father missed her unbearably. But he did have "two Gentile women, and so did I; in fact we shared the same two women most of the time, but this was not for having children or marriage, this was just for fun."
Charming.
By the way, note that I relayed this in a small but effective paragraph. Rice took two paragraphs. I'm not saying that laconic is best---I actually favor nice, descriptive prose, and I can think of a lot of series where much would have been lost if everything was trimmed down to the barest essentials only needed to move the story forward---but Rice draws EVERYTHING out, is the problem. This is not an EXCEPTIONAL example of her elongating things needlessly, but a very standard one. And in addition to the more obvious problems with that, I also think it ends up detracting from when her lengthy, elaborate prose is a GOOD and EFFECTIVE thing, because you're so cloyed with it at that point you can't appreciate it. At least that's how it is for me.
He talks more about his dad and how they worked in the temples and it was their private joke that "all idolaters were completely crazy, so why not work for them and humor them?" He then says how he had lots of friends among the priests, and describes how, when the food offerings were set before the idol of Marduk, Marduk fed upon them via the fragrance, then the priests and eunochs would eat the god's food but never the "good Hebrews" like himself and his dad.
Yes. We got this. This is another problem with Rice's over-writing---she puts in stuff that's utterly irrelevant or repetitious. I don't mind irrelevant detail that enhances the story, sets a scene, emphasizes character, or even just makes me laugh, but Rice just piles it on, and, as I just said, repeats stuff, and takes a lot of TIME repeating stuff. It's very frustrating to slog through, and it's not even fun to snark. Because it's not funny bad, it's just...slow.
He then says that when he began his journey to find the killers of Esther and happened upon Gregory Belkin's grandfather, he saw that many Jews, strict though they were, make their living in NYC just as they once did in Babylon. Then he goes back to Babylon, how he was at the tavern with his father, and by the way there were men dancing with each other there and "no harlots there that night. Just a man's place." I'm sure that appeals greatly to Rice. Azriel is swearing to his father that though it makes him an idolater, he saw the god Marduk with his own eyes. Marduk is in fact there in the tavern, and he turns his back on Azriel and shakes his dead. Azriel and his father argue for hours, his father saying that Azriel has misused his powers as a "seer" and "should have used them for us."
The next day Marduk appears to Azriel in "vaporous gold, visible however" a few blocks from Az's house. He tells Az not to touch him or "we will have a religious spectacle on our hands." Az asks him if he's angry about Az telling his dad, Marduk says he's not but that he doesn't trust the temple priests, that they are old and conniving and "you never know what they will want of you". He says he has some things he wants to tell Azriel, but suggests they go into the public gardens first because he likes to see Az eat and drink.
They got to Marduk's favorite place, a huge public garden by the Euphrates with dropping willows and some musicians playing pipes and dancing for trinkets. As they sit down, it occurs to Azriel that he knows Marduk even better than his own brothers, and he emphasizes that he LOVES his brothers, even if he has more fun with his father because his brothers are a bit too "tame when it comes to drinking and dancing."
Az stops, and Jon thinks it is out of respect for his long-dead brothers. He also thinks how Az is "beyond beautiful" in his red velvet and how his pauses "brought me back visually to him in a way that was seductive."
HETEROSEXUAL MALE THOUGHTS, EVERYBODY!
Azriel goes back to his story. He says Marduk said he didn't have any memories of doing stuff like slaying Tiamat "but that doesn't mean it didn't happen" and that he spends most of his time "in a fog" and sees the spirits of other gods and of the restless dead, and that he hears prayers and tries to answer them. "But this is a dreary place where I live" and so it is a "great pleasure" when he goes to the temple for a banquet because "the fog clears. You know what clears it?" Azriel guesses it's because the priests can see Marduk, and Marduk says that's right, that "I can become solid and visible for witches, sorcerers, for those to have eyes to see" and he drinks up the libations of water and inhales the fragrances of offerings and all the other stuff we already learned that the 'gods' and spirits do. "Then I go into the statue and I rest in darkness and time means nothing to me and I listen to Babylon. But the myths of the beginning, I don't remember, you see what I'm saying?"
Azriel says he doesn't, and asks if Marduk is saying he's not a god? Marduk says he is a god, and a powerful one, that he could clear this marketplace with wind, but what he's saying is he just doesn't remember all the things he supposedly did that people tell stories about, how "I've either forgotten it, or I'm growing weak and don't remember."
...uh, that's the same thing. Forgetting is the same thing as not remembering.
Marduk says then that "Gods can die." He says they can "fade" just like kings do, that they can sleep and it takes much to wake them back up, but that when he is awake and alert "I love Babylon and Babylon loves me back."
Azriel says that Marduk is weary because the New Year's Festival hasn't been held in ten years because "the addlebrained old idiot" King Nabodinus has neglected Marduk and Marduk's priest and if Nab could just "come home again and hold the festival" then Marduk would be fine and would be filled with the life of all those in Babylon who saw him on the Processional Way. Marduk says that's a fine idea but that he actually has "no love" for the New Year's Festival and being in the statue and holding hands with the king, that sometimes he even wants to knock the king down into the Processional Way gutters. "Don't you see? It's not what they tell you, it's not!"
Marduk goes silent, then tells Azriel to picture him in his mind and to take away the gold and see me "pink and alive"
...I don't think ancient Middle Easterners were pink. Just saying, Rice.
Marduk tells him to picture this, then to reach out and touch his hands, to "Let the god out of the gold". Azriel is trembling, Marduk asks why he's scared, saying no one will see him as anything but a noble in fine clothes. Azriel says he's scared because it might work, and "a most troubling thought has come to me. You want to escape, Marduk" and that if this works, then Marduk can do it. Marduk responds by asking "Why the hell does this fright a son of Yahweh?" then apologizes and says that he loves Azriel over all his worshippers, that he won't abandon Babylon, but that this would "give me freedom" to walk among humans as one of them. For some reason he then talks about how he can make storms, and make wishes come true "because I know this", and he knows that the "demons" people fear are just the spirits of the restless dead.
Az asked if that was really true, since, he explains to Jon, getting rid of demons was a big business in Babylon. Marduk amends that MOST of the demons are just spirits of the dead, but there are some spirits that are "as strong as gods" that "hate" and "want to hurt". So, as with her vampire/witch series, there is a division between spirits of dead people, and spirits that were never human. But these evil ones don't usually bother with stuff like making milkmaids sick and that such pranks are for the restless dead.
Azriel thinks about how "splendid" that this "beautiful noble creature is" and how "I loved him with tears. I loved him with laughter." So he reaches out and touches Marduk and he's no longer gold and now he's become a real visible man. He looks like a beautiful noble gentleman and everyone notices him but not because anyone saw him materialize "they just noticed him." Rice takes two small paragraphs and medium one for this. Jon asks if it was "clear he was Marduk?" and Az says that without the gold he just looked like a king or ambassador. And everyone was looking at him btw.
Az was "frozen with anxiety" but Marduk says "Come on friend" and yammers a lot about how everyone is looking at him and he wants to go to Az's house. He says that Az's uncles will all go crazy and that his god's ears can hear that his uncles are currently gathering all the wise men of Judea to talk about what to do about Azriel and the fact he can see and hear pagan gods.
So, at this point I don't feel much point in going line by line anymore, so I'm gonna just go through what meaty bits there are.
They walk around. They see the spirits of other gods, Ishtar and Shamash ad Nabu and such. They're annoyed and envious that Marduk has "escaped" but they don't do anything except glower. Marduk waves them away and they vanish.
Azriel wonders why Marduk doesn't have the priests bring him to life like Az has, Marduk says the priests don't have the power, just Azriel
Azriel mentions how Cyrus the Persian is going to sack the city
A bunch of Hebrew elders come towards them. Among them is the prophet Enoch, half-naked and covered in ash and dirt and carrying a staff. Enoch recognizes Marduk as the "idol" that he is and causes the gold to come back on him. Azriel and Marduk both resist it so it's a light covering, but it's still coating Marduk all over. Azriel's father intervenes, getting between them and Enoch and telling Enoch that "You hurt us with this too" and Enoch hits him with his staff. The gold is getting thicker on Marduk, whom Enoch says is nothing but an "imposter sent out from the temple".
Enoch yells about how Babylon's time has come and it will be humbled and Yahweh has sent Cyrus the Persian to punish them for what they did to the Chosen People (Jews). The Hebrews roar and cheer. Enoch says Cyrus will save this city from "the mad Nabodinus", and the whole crowd "cried up for joy"
Then hordes of people start bowing to Marduk, Enoch tells him to "savor your moment" and re-iterates that Marduk is just "an imposter" and that there are "naught but statues" in the temple. Azriel is "speechless" and can't figure this out, which is fair enough. Marduk throws up his hands and says he's leaving now but he feels dread, not for Babylon but for Azriel, "Now comes my moment o pride" and he blazes with gold light. In a "huge voice, more huge than a man" he tells Enoch "and all your tribe" to get away from him, that he forgives Enoch and tells him his god is "faceless and merciless" and that "I call down the wind now to scatter you all!" which he does. A huge sandstorm appears, and Marduk explodes in golden light. Naturally, everyone freaks out in a panic, while Azriel just stands there and Enoch laughs and tells Azriel how he will pay for "eating the food of the false gods". Azriel becomes "furious" and tells him to "Call on Yahweh to stop this sandstorm, you fool!" as his brothers drag him away. Likewise, a bunch of elders pick up Enoch and take him away too. Enoch is thrashing and screaming like a madman.
Ugh, I can't believe I'm only up to Chapter Four now. I'm definitely gonna have to do a briefer summary style for the next stuff, especially if there's really nothing sporkable there either.
Sorry these are so boring, guys!
I picked up the first book of Vampire Academy at a used bookstore because it was 75 cents and I am pleasantly surprised by it? I admit, I had some preconceived notions about how it was gonna be since it's YA paranormal romance, but I'm five and a half chapters in and not only is there nothing that thus far bothers me, I'm honestly so impressed that the primary relationship/concern of the heroine is her female best friend? Her bestie is vampire royalty that she's the bodyguard for, and they have this super special empathic bond, and the heroine lets her feed from her even though they know it would be considered super sexual kinky if anyone found out (but it's not sexual with them, just out of necessity, even though it explicitly feels REALLY REALLY GOOD and she gets jealous when she sees her vampire princess bestie feed from a human) and she genuinely cares about her thus far and thinks a lot about her and looks out for her physically and emotionally in a way that goes beyond just "well I'm her guardian so I have to take care of her" sort of way? I'm not expecting the author to spring Surprise Schoolgirl Lesbians on us, both of them chat about how hot guys are and there's already the obvious YA love interest guys introduced that both girls will obviously end up with, but I just genuinely love that there's a real bond between two women (well, girls) in this book that is treated as real and important and given attention to. One thing that has put me off a TON of the paranormal romance/urban fantasy genre is that it always seems to be that the heroine only has positive relationships with men, and all other females are either antagonists or unimportant. Nothing puts me off from a book faster than "all females except me are harpies and bitches" type heroines, especially when the writer (usually a woman herself) sets that up as the objective truth and not just the heroine's personal issues. Other than that, it's nothing really remarkable or great, pretty much so far just high school clique stuff with a sprinkling of supernatural trappings, but I was impressed enough by this aspect to make note of it.
Also, who here knows about the Nagaraja clan from the "Vampire: The Masquerade" setting? I really like the Nagaraja vampires because their need to eat human flesh in addition to blood is just such a great weakness? It's truly monstrous from a cultural taboo standpoint, even if they're just stealing the meat from dead bodies. It's a very difficult weakness to get around too, as you only have so many options to do this without attracting attention, and will probably have to get creative (especially if you can't get a job in a morgue, disposing medical waste, etc.) And finally, it's gross. On an OOC level, it's gross. Drinking blood is something that I think any vampire fan is just inured to after a certain point (in fiction, of course, I think we all agree it'd be a lot nastier irl), especially since it's so easily romanticized and sexualized in vampire fiction. Like how many pictures have you seen of a "sexy" vampire with blood on their mouth? But you can't really do that with BITING CHUNKS OUT OF PEOPLE. Hannibal Lector might have made cannibalism all elegant and classy, but your average Lestat type is gonna look a lot less hot when he goes all The Walking Dead on somebody. It really makes vampirism what it should be, in my opinion---a curse. At the same time, they're not mindless like zombies or the vampires from The Strain, or souless like Buffy vamps, so they can still be, you know, CHARACTERS. Not that some Buffy vamps weren't "characters" even sans soul (Spike, Drusilla, etc) but they did always have to be evil. And I do like evil vampires, I also just like evil ultimately being a choice in the end no matter WHAT you are.
Also, I bet Limyaael would HATE Blackwood Farm:
https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/things-that-really-irritate-limyaael
SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER 3
Jon asks what it was like to roam the beautiful temple. Azriel describes it. He also talks some about clay tablets and how those work. He also says he never saw "the hungry" or a "wretched slave" in Babylon and that "everyone is happy". I'm going to call bullshit and say this is simply because Azriel is sticking to the privileged places where rich boys like him lived, rather than Babylon being the one city ever not to have an underclass of some kind.
He tells how at the time, Cyrus the Persian was "on the march" and "taking Greek cities" so lots of cities were sending their gods to Babylon for protection, which I take to mean statues/idols of said gods. He says that people were very afraid of their gods being stolen, that Marduk himself had been prisoner of another city for 200 years. Jon asks if they ever talked about this, Az says he never asked him. Az goes back to talking about the temples and how he made friends with the "palace crowd" like the eunochs and temple prostitutes and temple slaves and other pages like himself. He says that when it came to "rich hostages like us, rich deportees" the Babylonian policy was to pick out the young men like Azriel to train up in Babylonian ways, and so if they were sent back home or to some unknown province, they would be "good Babylonians, that is, skilled members of the King's loyal service. There were scores of Hebrews at court."
Despite this, some of his uncles were furious that Az and his dad worked in the temple, but he says he and his dad just shrugged and pointed out that they neither worshipped the Babylonian gods nor eat with the Babylonians, nor eat the food their gods have eaten.
"Let me note here, this eating of food. It's still important for Hebrews. No? You don't eat with heathens. You didn't then."
This phrasing feels a lot more like something Rice is making sure the reader knows, than something one Jewish character who expects the other one to just automatically understand, would say. Like, if Azriel is supposed to just presume that Jonathon/modern Jews have this same practice, why is he saying it like that? I dunno, does it read like that to anyone else?
He then talks more about how "as good Hebrews" his family did such and so on traditions surrounding food. Which, again, you gotta wonder why he's explaining to another Jewish person. I get that traditions change over the years, especially SO MANY years, I'm sure Jonathon eats with "heathens"as many modern Jews do, but it just feels so..."As You Know, Bob" like Anne Rice is just DYING to show us how much research she did and can't wait for a more subtle, organic opportunity. Reminds me of LKH in that regard. And then he talks about how they had to be "strong" and what that meant for Hebrews was to be "powerful enough to disperse without being destroyed" and how they had "every intention of returning rich to our homeland"
Rice truly cannot stop talking about being rich in this book. Like there's nothing wrong or obnoxious about that sentence in itself, just on this same very page she reminded us YET AGAIN that Azriel's family was rich, as if we might have forgotten since last chapter. I feel like she doesn't realize that this technically makes Azriel a money-obsessed Jew. Seriously, I'd get fed up with this fucker real fast, wouldn't you? No one likes the dude who can't shut up about how rich his folks are, regardless of religion.
Jon asks if Azriel looked then like he did now. He tells us that this is a 'repeat question" and "one of those soft verbal signals: God gave you all the right gifts, young man."
...tell me again how Jon is meant to be straight and not attracted to Azriel? I don't know what's weirder, Rice's compulsion to make all men bisexual, or her insistence that they're NOT even when she's writing them that way.
Az says yes, that he "wanted to be smooth-faced" but that it "doesn't seem to be my luck." He then says that when sorcerors conjured him as the Servant of the Bones, they would "seldom" wait to see what he really looked like, instead ordering him to be something like a fire that would burn their enemies to cinders. He then says that he looks as he did when he died save for one "salient characteristic" but he doesn't say what that is. Jon doesn't ask, but does ask why he says he was a fool to tell his dad about Marduk. Azriel says "This is the hardest part for me to tell you, Jonathon Ben Isaac" and how he has never told anyone, and asked if God never forgets, if God will forever deny him the Stairway to Heaven.
Jon cautions him "as an older human being, though my soul may be newborn" to not be so sure of Heaven, nor that their God is any more real than Marduk.
So, I cannot emphasize enough how little I know of Judaism. But what I have picked up tangentially from a friend who is converting, this statement sounds more "Jewish" than anything else said yet. I may be totally wrong, but what I've been getting from this friend is that Judaism is a lot more debatable, doubtful, and even at times agnostic than Christianity allows for. Though I'm sure that varies a LOT by sect and culture and so on.
Azriel though, seems to take a more black and white view, since he asks Jon if this means that Jon believes in one but not the other (no, I don't think he believes in Marduk, Az) Jon says he wants to blunt Az's pain of retelling what happened, to blunt his sense of fatality and belief that he is destined for something terrible because of things other people have done.
...buddy, you don't even know what happened yet, nor what Azriel has done. Of course, I'm sure that, just as he claims, he only ever kills Bad People. and there's never the vaguest real questioning on why he gets to decide who that is. It's not that I demand protagonists never kill, or that they must kill innocents for some reason or it's a cop-out, it's just the way that Rice tends to write the whole "only kill the Evil-Doer" ends up being a very childish, shallow solution to what should be a much deeper issue/question. By providing ready-made 2D malicious strawmen that her supernatural heroes can kill without any moral conundrum or hesitation, she gets to take any real moral debate out of it, and have her guys have their cake and eat it too---get to be big bad killers without actually doing anything bad, oh no!
Azriel says that this is wise and generous of Jon, that he himself is "still a fool" in many ways. Jon asks to go back to Babylon and for Azriel to "explain the plot" which I find hilariously meta.
Az goes back to how he was his dad's best friend "and my best friend was Marduk" and he and his dad went out to taverns together, how it was only his father who could have made him do what it took to become the Servant of the Bones. He starts talking about "strange how it all comes together" and about potions, about priests, about how he didn't trust Cyrus and it's all cleverness with Persians. This is meant to be confusing, we as the reader don't know what he's on about yet, but we will.
Eventually anyway.
Jon tells him to takes his time and catch his breath. Azriel goes back to talking about his family, and we finally get some word on his mother. She was a scribe from a family of scribes, and "something of a prophetess, but this had ceased when she had sons." She died of illness when Azriel was young, crying that she would not live to see Yahweh return them to Zion, and Az's father missed her unbearably. But he did have "two Gentile women, and so did I; in fact we shared the same two women most of the time, but this was not for having children or marriage, this was just for fun."
Charming.
By the way, note that I relayed this in a small but effective paragraph. Rice took two paragraphs. I'm not saying that laconic is best---I actually favor nice, descriptive prose, and I can think of a lot of series where much would have been lost if everything was trimmed down to the barest essentials only needed to move the story forward---but Rice draws EVERYTHING out, is the problem. This is not an EXCEPTIONAL example of her elongating things needlessly, but a very standard one. And in addition to the more obvious problems with that, I also think it ends up detracting from when her lengthy, elaborate prose is a GOOD and EFFECTIVE thing, because you're so cloyed with it at that point you can't appreciate it. At least that's how it is for me.
He talks more about his dad and how they worked in the temples and it was their private joke that "all idolaters were completely crazy, so why not work for them and humor them?" He then says how he had lots of friends among the priests, and describes how, when the food offerings were set before the idol of Marduk, Marduk fed upon them via the fragrance, then the priests and eunochs would eat the god's food but never the "good Hebrews" like himself and his dad.
Yes. We got this. This is another problem with Rice's over-writing---she puts in stuff that's utterly irrelevant or repetitious. I don't mind irrelevant detail that enhances the story, sets a scene, emphasizes character, or even just makes me laugh, but Rice just piles it on, and, as I just said, repeats stuff, and takes a lot of TIME repeating stuff. It's very frustrating to slog through, and it's not even fun to snark. Because it's not funny bad, it's just...slow.
He then says that when he began his journey to find the killers of Esther and happened upon Gregory Belkin's grandfather, he saw that many Jews, strict though they were, make their living in NYC just as they once did in Babylon. Then he goes back to Babylon, how he was at the tavern with his father, and by the way there were men dancing with each other there and "no harlots there that night. Just a man's place." I'm sure that appeals greatly to Rice. Azriel is swearing to his father that though it makes him an idolater, he saw the god Marduk with his own eyes. Marduk is in fact there in the tavern, and he turns his back on Azriel and shakes his dead. Azriel and his father argue for hours, his father saying that Azriel has misused his powers as a "seer" and "should have used them for us."
The next day Marduk appears to Azriel in "vaporous gold, visible however" a few blocks from Az's house. He tells Az not to touch him or "we will have a religious spectacle on our hands." Az asks him if he's angry about Az telling his dad, Marduk says he's not but that he doesn't trust the temple priests, that they are old and conniving and "you never know what they will want of you". He says he has some things he wants to tell Azriel, but suggests they go into the public gardens first because he likes to see Az eat and drink.
They got to Marduk's favorite place, a huge public garden by the Euphrates with dropping willows and some musicians playing pipes and dancing for trinkets. As they sit down, it occurs to Azriel that he knows Marduk even better than his own brothers, and he emphasizes that he LOVES his brothers, even if he has more fun with his father because his brothers are a bit too "tame when it comes to drinking and dancing."
Az stops, and Jon thinks it is out of respect for his long-dead brothers. He also thinks how Az is "beyond beautiful" in his red velvet and how his pauses "brought me back visually to him in a way that was seductive."
HETEROSEXUAL MALE THOUGHTS, EVERYBODY!
Azriel goes back to his story. He says Marduk said he didn't have any memories of doing stuff like slaying Tiamat "but that doesn't mean it didn't happen" and that he spends most of his time "in a fog" and sees the spirits of other gods and of the restless dead, and that he hears prayers and tries to answer them. "But this is a dreary place where I live" and so it is a "great pleasure" when he goes to the temple for a banquet because "the fog clears. You know what clears it?" Azriel guesses it's because the priests can see Marduk, and Marduk says that's right, that "I can become solid and visible for witches, sorcerers, for those to have eyes to see" and he drinks up the libations of water and inhales the fragrances of offerings and all the other stuff we already learned that the 'gods' and spirits do. "Then I go into the statue and I rest in darkness and time means nothing to me and I listen to Babylon. But the myths of the beginning, I don't remember, you see what I'm saying?"
Azriel says he doesn't, and asks if Marduk is saying he's not a god? Marduk says he is a god, and a powerful one, that he could clear this marketplace with wind, but what he's saying is he just doesn't remember all the things he supposedly did that people tell stories about, how "I've either forgotten it, or I'm growing weak and don't remember."
...uh, that's the same thing. Forgetting is the same thing as not remembering.
Marduk says then that "Gods can die." He says they can "fade" just like kings do, that they can sleep and it takes much to wake them back up, but that when he is awake and alert "I love Babylon and Babylon loves me back."
Azriel says that Marduk is weary because the New Year's Festival hasn't been held in ten years because "the addlebrained old idiot" King Nabodinus has neglected Marduk and Marduk's priest and if Nab could just "come home again and hold the festival" then Marduk would be fine and would be filled with the life of all those in Babylon who saw him on the Processional Way. Marduk says that's a fine idea but that he actually has "no love" for the New Year's Festival and being in the statue and holding hands with the king, that sometimes he even wants to knock the king down into the Processional Way gutters. "Don't you see? It's not what they tell you, it's not!"
Marduk goes silent, then tells Azriel to picture him in his mind and to take away the gold and see me "pink and alive"
...I don't think ancient Middle Easterners were pink. Just saying, Rice.
Marduk tells him to picture this, then to reach out and touch his hands, to "Let the god out of the gold". Azriel is trembling, Marduk asks why he's scared, saying no one will see him as anything but a noble in fine clothes. Azriel says he's scared because it might work, and "a most troubling thought has come to me. You want to escape, Marduk" and that if this works, then Marduk can do it. Marduk responds by asking "Why the hell does this fright a son of Yahweh?" then apologizes and says that he loves Azriel over all his worshippers, that he won't abandon Babylon, but that this would "give me freedom" to walk among humans as one of them. For some reason he then talks about how he can make storms, and make wishes come true "because I know this", and he knows that the "demons" people fear are just the spirits of the restless dead.
Az asked if that was really true, since, he explains to Jon, getting rid of demons was a big business in Babylon. Marduk amends that MOST of the demons are just spirits of the dead, but there are some spirits that are "as strong as gods" that "hate" and "want to hurt". So, as with her vampire/witch series, there is a division between spirits of dead people, and spirits that were never human. But these evil ones don't usually bother with stuff like making milkmaids sick and that such pranks are for the restless dead.
Azriel thinks about how "splendid" that this "beautiful noble creature is" and how "I loved him with tears. I loved him with laughter." So he reaches out and touches Marduk and he's no longer gold and now he's become a real visible man. He looks like a beautiful noble gentleman and everyone notices him but not because anyone saw him materialize "they just noticed him." Rice takes two small paragraphs and medium one for this. Jon asks if it was "clear he was Marduk?" and Az says that without the gold he just looked like a king or ambassador. And everyone was looking at him btw.
Az was "frozen with anxiety" but Marduk says "Come on friend" and yammers a lot about how everyone is looking at him and he wants to go to Az's house. He says that Az's uncles will all go crazy and that his god's ears can hear that his uncles are currently gathering all the wise men of Judea to talk about what to do about Azriel and the fact he can see and hear pagan gods.
So, at this point I don't feel much point in going line by line anymore, so I'm gonna just go through what meaty bits there are.
They walk around. They see the spirits of other gods, Ishtar and Shamash ad Nabu and such. They're annoyed and envious that Marduk has "escaped" but they don't do anything except glower. Marduk waves them away and they vanish.
Azriel wonders why Marduk doesn't have the priests bring him to life like Az has, Marduk says the priests don't have the power, just Azriel
Azriel mentions how Cyrus the Persian is going to sack the city
A bunch of Hebrew elders come towards them. Among them is the prophet Enoch, half-naked and covered in ash and dirt and carrying a staff. Enoch recognizes Marduk as the "idol" that he is and causes the gold to come back on him. Azriel and Marduk both resist it so it's a light covering, but it's still coating Marduk all over. Azriel's father intervenes, getting between them and Enoch and telling Enoch that "You hurt us with this too" and Enoch hits him with his staff. The gold is getting thicker on Marduk, whom Enoch says is nothing but an "imposter sent out from the temple".
Enoch yells about how Babylon's time has come and it will be humbled and Yahweh has sent Cyrus the Persian to punish them for what they did to the Chosen People (Jews). The Hebrews roar and cheer. Enoch says Cyrus will save this city from "the mad Nabodinus", and the whole crowd "cried up for joy"
Then hordes of people start bowing to Marduk, Enoch tells him to "savor your moment" and re-iterates that Marduk is just "an imposter" and that there are "naught but statues" in the temple. Azriel is "speechless" and can't figure this out, which is fair enough. Marduk throws up his hands and says he's leaving now but he feels dread, not for Babylon but for Azriel, "Now comes my moment o pride" and he blazes with gold light. In a "huge voice, more huge than a man" he tells Enoch "and all your tribe" to get away from him, that he forgives Enoch and tells him his god is "faceless and merciless" and that "I call down the wind now to scatter you all!" which he does. A huge sandstorm appears, and Marduk explodes in golden light. Naturally, everyone freaks out in a panic, while Azriel just stands there and Enoch laughs and tells Azriel how he will pay for "eating the food of the false gods". Azriel becomes "furious" and tells him to "Call on Yahweh to stop this sandstorm, you fool!" as his brothers drag him away. Likewise, a bunch of elders pick up Enoch and take him away too. Enoch is thrashing and screaming like a madman.
Ugh, I can't believe I'm only up to Chapter Four now. I'm definitely gonna have to do a briefer summary style for the next stuff, especially if there's really nothing sporkable there either.
Sorry these are so boring, guys!
