Review

The Tale of the Body Thief is the fourth novel in The Vampire Chronicles series which was first published in 1992 and is a bit of departure from the previous books as it does not centre on vampire lore and most of the other characters are absent.

Depressed after the events in The Queen of the Damned, Lestat is disgusted by his vampiric nature and his need to feed on victims to sustain his life even if he tries to stick to murderers. Lestat is also having nightmares about Claudia and is feeling increasingly remorseful about his role in her death. Seemingly having been abandoned by the other vampires and feeling incredibly lonely, Lestat decides to end his life by exposing himself to the sun in the Gobi desert but it fails as his body has become too strong. A weakened Lestat seeks sanctuary with David Talbot, the elderly supervisor of the London Talamasca house, who seems to be his only friend. However, David repeatedly refuses the Dark Gift when Lestat offers it to him.

Despondent that David does not want to become his immortal companion, Lestat wanders around New Orleans where he is soon approached by Raglan James who claims to be able to switch bodies. Raglan offers Lestat the chance to swap bodies with him for a day so the vampire can experience what it is like to be mortal once more. Lestat is initially sceptical and despite David’s warnings, he finally agrees but soon learns Raglan has no intention of swapping back. Trapped in a mortal body without a penny, Lestat wanders the streets of Washington in the middle of winter and almost dies when he contracts pneumonia.

Lestat is nursed back to heath by Gretchen, a nun who is having doubts about her vocation, and they become lovers for a while before she returns to her mission work in South America. Still weak from his illness, Lestat returns to New Orleans where he begs Louis to turn him into a vampire but he refuses. Realising none of the vampires are going to help him, Lestat turns once more to David and they devise a scheme to take back Lestat’s vampire body. The need for Lestat to regain his body becomes increasingly critical as Raglan is misusing his powers to murder and the other vampires are planning to destroy Lestat’s body to stop the mayhem.

The Tale of the Body Thief is a rather strange novel and I remembered really enjoying it the first time I read it but the charm seems to have worn off after subsequent readings for some reason. During my most recent read, I kept thinking how stupid Lestat was for giving his powerful body to a man he knew was not to be trusted and he pretty much gaslights himself into believing it will all work out. After his time with Akasha, Lestat knows his body has become more powerful and he seems unable to come to terms with the fact he cannot easily be destroyed. When you don’t know the limits of your own power, it is not a good idea to hand it over to a mortal.

When Lestat does complete the switch, the revelation that he has been tricked takes away any enjoyment he may have gotten from the experience and he seems pretty disgusted by most of it. It would have been fun if Anne Rice had given us Raglan’s point of view as he must have relished being in that vampire body even if he was completely out of his depth. Fortunately for Lestat, Raglan isn’t the brightest of beings and he is easily tricked after Lestat is given some head scratching lessons from David on how to push his soul from the mortal body and back into his own one.

There is a twist at the end when all the switching has taken place when Lestat learns David has actually become trapped in the young body Lestat has just vacated – the one that apparently didn’t belong to Raglan James either. Since David’s elderly body has died with Raglan inside, David has no choice to remain in his new body and Lestat finally takes the opportunity to turn his friend into a vampire against his will. Or so it seems since there has been some scheming going on between Louis and David. Lestat begins some extensive renovation work on his old home in New Orleans, and the unlikely trio move in together with David very much taking charge.

And so we have a new dynamic of companions that is probably not going to last as none of the vampires seem to be able to remain together for long. Incidentally, Anne Rice really does not explain why the other vampires are keeping their distance from Lestat since they were all together at the end of The Queen of the Damned. The new co-operation that seemed to exist between them seems to have evaporated quite quickly but you would have thought they would’ve wanted to know what was going on with Lestat. None of them rushed to the Gobi desert to help him either even though they must have been aware of the agony he was enduring. Seems like a contrived way to push him towards David Talbot than anything else.