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Her new novel, Servant of the Bones, concerns the ghost Azriel. Babylonian by birth, Jewish by training, Azriel is a regular guy who's thrust into a world he doesn't understand by evil men who wish to use him for their own selfish means. They kill him, but that's incidental, because what they really do to him is turn him into a ghost, the evil Servant of the Bones. Once he's dead, his bones are kept in a small box, sort of a coffin, and whoever has the box controls the ghost, and -- well, you get the picture. Think Aladdin and the magic lamp.
Azriel's journey takes him from ancient Babylon to modern-day New York, to which he has tracked down the killers of a murder victim whose stepfather is the leader of a dangerously influential religious cult that's reached into the hearts and minds of people worldwide, as well as into the inner core of the Hasidic Jewish world in Brooklyn. The balance of the novel has Azriel wrestling with his malevolent urges and his wish to be benevolent, which he hopes to achieve by avenging the girl's death.
Rice has woven through this book the seminal religious philosophy known as kabbalah. Though she merely skims the surface of its belief system, she does so with knowledge and assurance. I get the feeling she knows more than she's telling here.
That said, I believe Servant of the Bones is simply an introduction to a new set of characters, the first novel in a new series in which the seemingly indestructible Azriel flies about the world doing -- well, doing what ghosts do.
My one disappointment is that structurally the novel is a lot like Interview with the Vampire. We meet the interviewer, Jonathan, and he proceeds to let Azriel tell him the story of his life. Why does Azriel confess? Because, like the vampire Louis, he expects that Jonathan will write a book. Of course, Servant of the Bones is that book. And just as the vampire Lestat arose to create a new universe in books ostensibly written by him, I suspect something similar will happen with these characters. A minor disappointment, but there it is.
Still, if this is the start of a new series, it's a wonderful opening chapter. Where the Mayfair Witches series fell short -- they seemed written by someone who wanted to write in the style of Anne Rice, but not by Rice herself -- Servant of the Bones does not. Thankfully, it brings us Rice's distinctive voice in top form, and a set of characters every bit as involving as the vampires. I can't wait to see where Azriel ends up next.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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