For a time it felt like The Gathering that was never going to happen.
After a long hiatus since our last meet at A Different Book Store in Serendra, Fort Bonifacio for the 5th Vampire Chronicle, Memnoch The Devil, meeting up for the next book in focus was a done deal. Apparently we were wrong for events and different life plans for all members got in the way up until it was decided that August 27 was the date and I would be seeing my fellow Vampires once more and we’d get to feast on coffee and cake and chat another late Saturday afternoon away. But once more, the Vampiric order of things was thrown in disarray for a typhoon set in that day and only me and Lynn were able to make it. Penny, on the other hand, whose back problem was acting up joined us on Skype as we tried to make some sense of a discussion and catch up on each other’s lives. With just us two (or 3), we decided to move the Book Meet to another Saturday that looked feasible for all. Fast forward to last night.
I got in at around 5pm at the new designated place which was now Cravings restaurant in Shangri-La Edsa Plaza. As per the conversation thread in our Facebook page, this was place was suggested because of their ongoing promo of unlimited cake and coffee for only P150 (roughly $3.45), that begins at 4pm and ends at 8pm. With our love for blood and coffee (interesting book title, if it be used), the excitement to gather once more and make do on that postponed promise to meet up loomed into reality until I got there. Penny was the first to arrive and looking fabulous and made up ordered her share of salad and take home Cordon Bleu. I, on the other hand, disciplined myself to stay away from cakes and started first with a cup of Cappuccino, before ordering their Hungarian sausage by the time Lynn came from after having an exhausting workload of tutoring.
I didn’t want to think that it would be only the 3 of us again who were arriving because Jestat was glad of the postponed book meet the last time and expressed desire to join this time and even sent me a text message yesterday morning inquiring if the Book Meet was pushing through. Now, Lynn was still finishing the book by the time we got there and that gave us some more time to enjoy our food and by the time the discussion was under way, I realized that it was too late for anyone else to come and “make habol”.
First off, Penny felt the book didn’t grab her on the onset. Having been accustomed to seeing Lestat drive things in a narrative was an Anne Rice staple and no other character had the stamina and the bratty wit to keep us enthralled. So for us who all read the book ages ago when it first came out (and after Memnoch, mind you), we didn’t really catch onto the character of Azriel.
To give you a summary, the story tells of Azriel, then a man living in Babylon, whose narrates his life to a Jewish scholar named Jonathan. Azriel, now a powerful spirit or dybuk, appears to this aging man during a self imposed writer’s retreat in his mountain cottage, nurses him back to health and reveals his story. We are introduced to Azriel’s life in Babylon during 539 B.C. and living under the rule of King Cyrus the Persian. Azriel was someone marked as special for during his young age, he is able to hear and converse with the golden Babylonian god, Marduk; to which the priests have already singled him out as someone to be reckoned with and later on to be used to appease the god himself in their glorification of their deity. Marduk for Azriel became his confidant, accomplice and best friend. And because of that, Azriel was craftily selected by the Babylonian witch Asenath, to participate in a celebration to personify Marduk by having himself painted in gold, re-enact the god’s slaying of a lion and paraded throughout the city with the conquering King being blessed on and thus bringing Cyrus closer to acceptance by the populace. But Asenath had an alterior motive.
She knew that this act meant Azriel had to sacrifice himself to the cause and take part in a ritual that involved boiling him into a pot of Gold and bonding his soul to the gold-encrusted bones and making him a genie or dybuk that would obey the whims and wishes of the one who possesses his bones; his Master; thus successfully creating the legendary Servant of the Bones. Lucky for Azriel, he only felt the boiling gold touch his skin momentarily as his soul rose to evade the pain and witness his own transformation as a spirit that can be sent to inhabit the bones and summoned back out whenever needed. His creation thus led him to be sent to his first Master, the Magician Zurvan in the Greek city of Miletus. Zurvan proved to be the Master who had the most profound effect on him; teaching and guiding him to fully realize the extent of his powers. His lessons carried and guided him from one master after another until he appears in present day New York City during the murder of a woman named Esther Belkin, who just happens to be the daughter of his current master, Gregory Belkin.
But Belkin was not the Master that Azriel can learn wisdom from. He may be rich, powerful but was also the fanatical leader of his own new age organization called The Temple of the Mind. With it, Gregory exerted much influence and planned to genocide the world’s population by way of a manufactured virus; a combination of new and old strains of the dreaded Ebola. Part of his plan is to use his twin brother, Nathan, whose existence was unknown the public, assassinate him thereby successfully faking his death and later rise 3 days after as a Messiah. Azriel fools him and spoil his plans, thus saving humanity from genocide.
I remember excitedly getting this novel first in 1996, the preferred Chatto and Windus version with a golden skull in front rather than the US cover that was all gold with embossed figures. Read it then and then most recently and found that although it wasn’t Anne’s best, it still had the potential to slowly draw you in and let you take part in the peeling process of characterization and layering of the plot till you reach the end.
Here are some points that were discussed:
1. We started by identifying the first issue that we had about Azriel and that was his pacificity. How could one, a loving son at that, so readily accept his father’s decision of allowing him to take part in the ritual and not have one ounce of anger and bitterness for it. Azriel knew that he was going to die and that the process will kill him. Was Azriel’s unconditional love for his father that deep or was it justified in the book by Azriel himself that no matter what he said about the issue, his father, being the parent of gifted son, would still be in danger from the Babylonian priests. Better to appease them than see my own father suffer. Should that be the case, then we would understand but his lack of emotion about the situation was just one of the things that had us scratching our heads.
2. Having kept his emotions in check, we were surprised to see Azriel cry at the death of Esther Belkin on the day that he re-appeared in New York. Could Esther have summoned him? Perhaps not a formal summoning. But having no concept why he was there and to see him break down as if he knew her and had some profound bond with Esther was another thing if not flaw that we found most puzzling. If we were to base it on the fact that seeing a woman murdered in front of you in cold blood was tragic enough to make one weep as such, then perhaps Azriel should’ve have had an issue regarding the taking of another life even way back then when his first Master, Zurvan ordered him to kill a group of Bedouins in the desert when they stole Azriel’s golden bones from him. Where was this sudden outpouring of emotion coming from?
3. According to the lore, the Servant of the Bones was not supposed to be able to touch his bones, but because the process of his own making was already flawed, the consequences could not have been the same. What the evil High Priest, Remath and Asenath wanted to make was a powerful genii that would be able to perform any task appointed to it. Although Azriel is indeed able to do that, his selection in itself was already a mistake. You see, the candidate needed to make a ruthless spirit was one that was already inherently bad in his human life. Azriel, was inherently good. A direct opposite of the prime candidate and perhaps it is that reason that we as a reader were getting mixed results.
4. Penny pointed out and asked why did Anne’s characters need a scribe to tell their tale? The Vampire Lestat spoke directly to the reader and didn’t need a scribe up until his adventures in the 5th Vampire chronicles. By then, Lestat, bound in chains needed David Talbot to transcribe his tale. But was it more “fashionable” to have one’s characters tell their story via a Scribe or does it have any purpose in lengthening and fleshing out the narrative in this manner?
5. For someone regarded as a god, Marduk certainly didn’t fulfil his end of the bargain by being a friend to Azriel. In fact, he was at a loss once Azriel became a spirit and proved useless to him by not being able to give comfort or wisdom to his plight. Did Marduk come off as all-knowing because Azriel didn’t share the same “status” as his because he was “beneath” him, as he was human? And once made like him, the mystery is unveiled; the truth revealed? The deception complete?
This by the way, reminds me of the Nihilistic themes of Anne in her earlier Vampire works. Her protagonist Louis, in Interview With The Vampire, was on the search for his purpose because he didn’t understand what was his nature in being a Vampire. Akasha, the antagonist in Queen of the Damned, could find no meaning to her own purpose and sought to make one by proclaiming that the male species should be annihilated and only the females are to be glorified and put on a pedestal. Was Marduk, equally exhibiting signs of a Nihilist nature by being unable to provide sense and comfort to Azriel because he was only putting up a front. To paraphrase Louis in describing Lestat’s absence of guidance, He knew nothing because there was nothing to know.
6. Like in her previous novels, our Anne has enjoyed writing and incorporating characters who have embraced their individuality or varied sexuality. Our favorite, Vampire Lestat was the first. And Azriel was no different as he felt no qualm in kissing his Master on the lips and loses himself to physical pleasure and abandon as he sleeps with Gregory Belkin’s wife, who already was dying from her ailment, just before she killed herself by jumping from the balcony of her Florida mansion. We wonder what fuelled Anne to add such textured but passionately written scenes into her works. Where does perhaps, carnality, lie in the essence of her writing?
7. We also were wondering who was it really that called Azriel to New York. The novel purports that Azriel came into his own and learned not to depend on a Master to constitute himself as opposed to the given that whoever possesses the bones has the power and authority to summon Azriel from the golden bones.
Could it have been Esther herself, for she recognized him in the few moments just before her death as she was ambulanced out after her murder. But then again, Azriel knew that no one called him. He was just drawn to the scene to witness a cleverly and made-to-look casual killing of Gregory Belkin’s step daughter.
We thought about it and referenced an earlier incident wherein Zurvan unconsciously summoned Azriel during his sleep by just thinking of him when he didn’t even need him during that moment. Could it be that Azriel, by this time, and after 4 Masters in his current incarnation, have become so well tuned, that even the slightest thought or reference of him by anyone who knows of the lore of his making can instantly summon him without his knowing and thus led him to believe that he has done so by his own will and volition?
8. The casting of an actor for the role of Azriel was also bandied and tossed about. We all agreed that the ideal person to play this if ever was Iranian actor, Oded Fehr. He was Zankou in the 6th season of Charmed, was the leader of Guardians looking after the tomb in Imhotep in the first 2 Mummy movies of Brendan Fraser and was also in Resident Evil 2 and 3. He is also my ideal actor to play my favorite Marvel comic character, Dr. Strange. I know I am digressing but indulge me in this a bit.
9. We also found that it was tragic that Azriel, for all his sacrifices and good intentions, has not been rewarded entry into Heaven. True that as Nathan was killed and he saw the similar stairway to Heaven which Rachel Belkin went up to, and he himself went on as it appeared, he was urged by Rachel to go back and inhabit Nathan’s dying body in order to stop Gregory. Azriel’s master, Zurvan, even urged him to see the “rationale” in this act even if it meant damning himself back into mortality and risk the possibility of not ever seeing the freedom again that he so relished in, as a spirit.
Could Anne have thought of a possible sequel and reworked her narrative to keep Azriel on Earth for another adventure back then? It certainly felt that his presence as a wanderer can lead to another story but then again, there was no guarantee of that. A door was potentially open. But unless one steps through it, it will always be ajar and not a true doorway that would certify its use to deliver a promise after having been crossed.
By the time we covered most points that got us enthralled, confused, laughing with cross references to other books, the restaurant started to close down, shut it lights and it was time to go home. And even though we were only a handful of members who attended all 3 of us still had fun and look forward to the next discussion, of which the next book we decided was the most unlikely of choices and yet one that would hopefully get more of the members talking and attending at the same time. It’s book 1 of Anne’s erotic trilogy, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.
