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A review by arnrockwell
The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Let it be known that I can indeed to critical of Anne Rice's books, and not completely blinded by nostalgia. And boy, do I have some words on this one.
The Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles... definitely suffers from middle book syndrome, among other things.
This book picks up after the events of The Queen of the Damned. The vampires who came together to fight Akasha in the previous book have all gone their separate ways.It's a thing for Rice's vampires to becomes sick of the presence of others of their kind and wander the world alone. Lestat has taken to prowling Miami, Florida.
He also travels to England in order to interact with David Talbot. Talbot was introduced in the previous book as a high-ranking member of the Talamasca, a human organization that studies the paranormal. He has basically become Lestat's new fascination, and Lestat really wants to turn him into a vampire.
Now, Lestat is also being watched by a strange man who claims he can switch bodies with people and offers Lestat the chance to live life as a human again. This is obviously a bad idea. The majority of this book is Lestat being an idiot and proving he didn't really learn anything from his time with Akasha at all.
The whole body-switching thing is an interesting concept, but it felt out of place in this book. It seemed like just an excuse to throw Lestat in a human body just so Rice could write a few quick sex scenes. One of which was a rape, by the way.
It’s so incredibly convenient that a couple of women decide to they want to screw Lestat’s young mortal body when they see him. Because he’s hot and charming, or whatever. Look, I know one night stands happen all the time in real life. But this felt forced. Sex for because why not? The vampire don’t do it, so gotta throw it in there somewhere. Only the second one was justified and even that’s kinda shaky.
The second woman he has sex with also happened to be a nun, temporarily taking time off, because she wanted to find someone she felt right in fucking so she wouldn’t die without knowing what it was like. And of course Lestat happens to meet her at a hospital while he’s recovering from severe illness. How convenient. That nun was also in the book for another convenience: theological discussions.
For context, this book and the one that came after, were written during a time when Anne Rice was becoming a hardcore Catholic and she used Lestat as her tool for expressing her beliefs. In general, I’m not against that sort of thing. Authors can do what they want. But with most of the other things that happened in this book, it felt like it was a bit too much.
Then there’s the fact that Lestat knew this whole body switch thing was a bad idea, of course. Louis told him it was bad idea. David told him it was a bad idea. But Lestat was so blinded by his desire to live like a human again, that he didn’t care and went through with it anyway, only to get screwed over, forcing him to seek help to get his body back.
He learned really quickly that he over-romanticized human existence in his head, even his own from way back when, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Which is pretty much the only thing he learns over the course of the book.
Another problem I had was… the lack of vampire stuff going on in general. When I read a vampire novel, I expect there to be a certain amount of vampire shenanigans. Even, and especially, if the protagonist is a vampire or heavily involved with them. But there’s not a whole lot of that in this book.
If you were to completely remove the whole “body thief” plot, there’s not a lot left over. Sure, there’s still a few parts where Lestat and David have some interaction that’s not dependent on the plot, but that’s it. There’s no other subplots or characters that he interacts with for any reason outside of what the plot dictates. Now that’s not a big deal if you like the book, of course. Then that’s fine. And it’s not a badly written book. It’s written about as well as her other stuff really. But I felt like the book had almost no reason to exist. Lestat is almost the exact same person at the end that he was at the beginning, and I did not want to waste my time time reading over 400 pages to find this out.
I cannot rate this book any higher than 2-stars. If I wasn’t used to Rice’s writing style, honestly, I don’t think I would’ve finished it.
The Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles... definitely suffers from middle book syndrome, among other things.
This book picks up after the events of The Queen of the Damned. The vampires who came together to fight Akasha in the previous book have all gone their separate ways.It's a thing for Rice's vampires to becomes sick of the presence of others of their kind and wander the world alone. Lestat has taken to prowling Miami, Florida.
He also travels to England in order to interact with David Talbot. Talbot was introduced in the previous book as a high-ranking member of the Talamasca, a human organization that studies the paranormal. He has basically become Lestat's new fascination, and Lestat really wants to turn him into a vampire.
Now, Lestat is also being watched by a strange man who claims he can switch bodies with people and offers Lestat the chance to live life as a human again. This is obviously a bad idea. The majority of this book is Lestat being an idiot and proving he didn't really learn anything from his time with Akasha at all.
The whole body-switching thing is an interesting concept, but it felt out of place in this book. It seemed like just an excuse to throw Lestat in a human body just so Rice could write a few quick sex scenes. One of which was a rape, by the way.
It’s so incredibly convenient that a couple of women decide to they want to screw Lestat’s young mortal body when they see him. Because he’s hot and charming, or whatever. Look, I know one night stands happen all the time in real life. But this felt forced. Sex for because why not? The vampire don’t do it, so gotta throw it in there somewhere. Only the second one was justified and even that’s kinda shaky.
The second woman he has sex with also happened to be a nun, temporarily taking time off, because she wanted to find someone she felt right in fucking so she wouldn’t die without knowing what it was like. And of course Lestat happens to meet her at a hospital while he’s recovering from severe illness. How convenient. That nun was also in the book for another convenience: theological discussions.
For context, this book and the one that came after, were written during a time when Anne Rice was becoming a hardcore Catholic and she used Lestat as her tool for expressing her beliefs. In general, I’m not against that sort of thing. Authors can do what they want. But with most of the other things that happened in this book, it felt like it was a bit too much.
Then there’s the fact that Lestat knew this whole body switch thing was a bad idea, of course. Louis told him it was bad idea. David told him it was a bad idea. But Lestat was so blinded by his desire to live like a human again, that he didn’t care and went through with it anyway, only to get screwed over, forcing him to seek help to get his body back.
He learned really quickly that he over-romanticized human existence in his head, even his own from way back when, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Which is pretty much the only thing he learns over the course of the book.
Another problem I had was… the lack of vampire stuff going on in general. When I read a vampire novel, I expect there to be a certain amount of vampire shenanigans. Even, and especially, if the protagonist is a vampire or heavily involved with them. But there’s not a whole lot of that in this book.
If you were to completely remove the whole “body thief” plot, there’s not a lot left over. Sure, there’s still a few parts where Lestat and David have some interaction that’s not dependent on the plot, but that’s it. There’s no other subplots or characters that he interacts with for any reason outside of what the plot dictates. Now that’s not a big deal if you like the book, of course. Then that’s fine. And it’s not a badly written book. It’s written about as well as her other stuff really. But I felt like the book had almost no reason to exist. Lestat is almost the exact same person at the end that he was at the beginning, and I did not want to waste my time time reading over 400 pages to find this out.
I cannot rate this book any higher than 2-stars. If I wasn’t used to Rice’s writing style, honestly, I don’t think I would’ve finished it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape and Sexual content