Servant of the Bones

Servant of the Bones is a novel by the American writer Anne Rice, published in 1996. Rice described it as a historical horror novel, and it is told as an account given aloud by its narrator.

The book is the story of Azriel, who was the son of a Jewish merchant in Babylon at the time of its conquest by Cyrus the Persian, and who was made into a spirit bound to the bones of a murdered girl. He serves whoever commands him across the centuries, present at the destruction of the temple in ancient Miletus, in medieval Strasbourg and in other cities where he is put to use. The narrative is framed in the present day, where Azriel is present at the murder of a young woman in New York and chooses to act without a master, and he explains himself by going back to the life he lost. Rice keeps the supernatural machinery inside the history, so the reader learns what Azriel is at the same time as what was done to him.

Rice was best known for her vampire novels, and this book belongs to the same territory of immortal figures moving through human history, with the religious and occult material treated as part of the setting.