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The Tale of the Body Thief [Paperback]

Anne Rice (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (135 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Release Date: Dec 13 1997 | Series: Vampire Chronicles
In another feat of hypnotic storytelling, Anne Rice continues the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles that began with the now classic Interview with the Vampire and continued with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned.

Lestat speaks.  Vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals.  For centuries he has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Lestat is alone.  And suddenly all his vampire rationale--everything he has come to believe and feel safe with--is called into question. In his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the danger-haunted years of his long existence.

The Tale of the Body Thief is told with the unique--and mesmerizing--passion, power, color, and invention that distinguish the novels of Anne Rice.


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It's been said that Vladimir Nabokov's best novels are the ones he wrote after starting a failed novel. Anne Rice wrote The Body Thief, the fourth thrilling episode of her Vampire Chronicles, right after she spent a long time poring over that most romantic of horror novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to research a novel Rice abandoned about an artificial man. Perhaps as a result of Shelley's influence, The Body Thief is far more psychologically penetrating than its predecessors, with a laser-like focus on a single tormented soul. Oh, we meet some wild new characters, and Rice's toothsome vampire-hero Lestat zooms around the globe--as is his magical habit--from Miami to the Gobi desert, but he's in such despair that he trades his immortal body to a con man named Raglan James, who offers him in return two days of strictly mortal bliss.

Lestat has always had a faulty impulse-control valve, and it gets him in truly intriguing trouble this time. On the plus side, he gets to experience romance with a nun and orange juice--"thick like blood, but full of sweetness." But Lestat is horrified by an uncommon cold, and his toilet training proves traumatic. He's also got to catch Raglan James, who has no intention of giving up his dishonestly acquired new superpowered body. Lestat enlists the help of David Talbot, a mortal in the Talamasca, a secret society of immortal watchers described in Queen of the Damned.

The swapping of bodies and supernatural stories is choice, and there's even a moral: never give a bloodsucker an even break. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The fourth book of the Vampire Chronicles series, launched in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire (which Knopf is simultaneously reissuing in cloth), reconfirms Rice's power as a mesmerizing raconteur. In sensuous, fluid prose, she follows the tormented vampire Lestat as he struggles to integrate his bloodthirsty nature with his aspirations to achieve humanity. Desiring to see the sun, to love without taking blood, to seek God as mortals do, Lestat enters blindly into an unholy bargain. In order to experience mortality for one day and two nights, he agrees to switch bodies with the scoundrel Raglan James, a former member of the secret order of scholarly occultists called the Talamasca, and a "sinister being," according to David Talbot, the order's superior general and Lestat's longtime friend and advisor. But Lestat has given little thought to how James intends to use his body and its vampiric powers. Trapped in the mortal state, Lestat must overcome the human frailties of despair and physical pain to thwart James's evil intentions and, with Talbot's help, regain his immortal self. Drawing on characters met in earlier novels as well as the lushly evoked settings of New Orleans, Miami and Paris, Rice once again deftly lures readers into the enchanting world of her anguished and deeply sympathetic hero. 500,000 first printing; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Jan 8 2013
By Pyretta
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is Anne Rice at her best! It is quite the page turner and we really get to know the characters and their history a little more.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Another Dark Adventure In The Life of Lestat April 1 2004
By I ain't no porn writer
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I thought "Queen of the Damned" was a little boring, but I liked this next novel in the vampire chronicles. Good story. Especially the last part of this book was very suspenseful and fast-paced. Sophisticated readers will enjoy some intellectual dialogues in the story too. A keeper.

p.s. I much prefer Anne Rice's vampires to her witches and erotic fairytales.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Something's Missing... Jan 29 2004
By Preyanka
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I've been reading a lot of Anne Rice lately. And while I can't say I haven't been moved at some points, generally speaking, my experience has been one of frustrating disappointment. Anne has come up with these fascinating and alluring CONCEPTS--these vampires who travel through centuries, across myriad lands and a panoply of cultures, forging and breaking relationships with one another--and with mortals all the while--sounds like a great idea for a series of books, and it IS, that's what's sad.

Somehow she fails when it comes to actually writing about these characters. Something's lacking. I think it's her main character and narrator, The Vampire Lestat. In my opinion he's too whiney and weak to be the hero of the chronicles. He goes on and on at the end of "Body Thief" about how he simply cannot help but be gleefully happy--that it's in his nature and he cannot be depressed for long. This was flabbergasting because Lestat--mischievous though he might be, is ALWAYS upset about something. Rice seems to want Lestat to be viewed in a certain light, so she tells the reader what to feel, but Lestat's actions throughout the book do not SHOW this at all.

In the other books of the chronicles, such as in QUEEN OF THE DAMNED, when she deals with the relationship between Armand and Daniel, THEN it becomes hard to put the book down. But the rest of time, when we are going round and round in circles with Lestat, rather than feeling absorbed and entertained, I find myself hoping she'll write more about those OTHER things.

I haven't read MEMNOCH THE DEVIL, and to be honest, I am afraid to because I hear it's quite dreadful. What I can say is that I think QUEEN OF THE DAMNED was the best book of the chronicles so far, and I recommend it highly.

Rice is a master when it comes to descriptive language, that is for certain, and I agree with all the literary critics who have ever labeled her writing as being "lush" but unfortunately that doesn't make up for the feeling I get when I read Anne Rice, that she is WASTING these wonderful concepts, and that in someone else's hands they could truly come alive.

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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite Ann Rice book of all time...!!
This is byfar her best that I've read. Great characters (as always), awesome storyline, and it keeps you enthralled until the very end...!! Excellent...!!
Published on Nov 11 2004 by Melissa
5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoy, you should
Now, there are very clear words that will tell you whether you'll like it or not. Read the introduction it's all there. Simply, it's unlike the past three. Read more
Published on May 6 2004 by Ruben Valenzuela
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good.
I actually really liekd this book, I dont know the exact reason why...but I did. Maybe it was because it was a lot different than the first three, and more modern. Read more
Published on Mar 18 2004 by "thecrowchicky69"
4.0 out of 5 stars Not too bad
This book was definitely a little different from the previous three. But it was still charming in its own way. Read more
Published on Feb 21 2004 by Igor
4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, but episodic
It is important to note that while this book is mighty interesting, it's much different then the first three. Read more
Published on Jan 8 2004
5.0 out of 5 stars Still a Wonderful tale!
After Queen of the Damned, philosophical discussions have a tendency to wane on some people. I can defintely understand why, but give it a chance!!!!!!!! Read more
Published on Dec 6 2003 by A. Nod
5.0 out of 5 stars my favorite in the series so far
i love all of the books by Anne Rice that i have read so far and this one is my favorite yet. this books isn't full of action but it does have lots of suprises and very good... Read more
Published on Dec 1 2003 by "amybot4"
3.0 out of 5 stars okay but nothing special
I loved Interview with the Vampire and liked the second and third books in this series, but this one was a disappointment. It's not an awful book. Read more
Published on Nov 22 2003
4.0 out of 5 stars Another good story
While "Tale of the Body Thief" pales in the light of "The Vampire Lestat" and "Queen of the Damned" it still more than delivers the goods. Read more
Published on Nov 9 2003 by NorthofCB
5.0 out of 5 stars I thought it was good
Unlike the some others reviewers I feel that this was a well written book. I thought it had a much faster pace then The Queen of the Damned, I could not put down Tale of the Body... Read more
Published on Oct 17 2003 by S. V. Divelbiss
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