Though Tale of the Body Thief did not live up to its three predecessors it was still a novel I would place among my favorites. It is hard to deny Anne Rice's exquisite writing talent and her ability to weave the net of her tale so tightly that the reader finds themselves trapped within it, unable to set the book down. In my opinion this was that last good novel in the Vampire Chronicles series. As I'm sure most fans know Anne Rice, regrettably, made the choice to rejoin the Catholic Church which for me spoiled her later writings. I was intrigued by Lestat's return to a human body though I was also endlessly annoyed by the fact that some lunatic was cavorting around in his beautiful immortal body! I also found in the novel that I rather liked David, I was glad that he became Lestat's friend and confidant even more than he had been previously. Tale of the Body Thief displays all of the virtues of the previous three novels and I love it but it somehow falls short in a way that I cannot quite explain. However, I highly recommend it to Anne Rice fans!

In this book, Anne Rice lets loose a wild streak of exuberant and improbable invention, dovetailed with rich observation of the here and now. It is a dazzling display of her volcanic, seemingly unstobbable ability to convincingly invent; one would call it showing off if it were not so consistently entertaining and involving. And it works. As in Faulkner's tour d'force As I Lay Dying, wherein the dead speak, one simply accepts all, driven by the demand to read on.

The Vampire Lestat, as we have known all along, has a problem. He wants to connect back with the human race, not just feed off it. He is deeply sensual, and his French boyhood 200 years ago was but a prefigurement of the modern world which he can only observe from a distance, never enter. Now this predicament is never stated explicitly by the writer, who is too shrewd for that. For one thing, it would give away the game since obviously, Lestat could only be a projection of a real modern sensibility--namely her own. So she creates this race course, so to speak, for Lestat to attempt to do all he cannot do, to love a few real human beings he will not kill, and ultimately to meet a "body thief" and concoct a deal to exchange bodies, for a time.

Narratively speaking of course, all Rice has done is up the ante -- way up -- a vampire as protagonist is improbable enough, but now this. Nevertheless like a magician showing off, building up from a rabbit in a hat to sawing a woman in half, the improbabilities heap on and on and the sheer power of the writing itself carries it all along. It is a superb performance. Certain passages including descriptions of modern New Orleans, the halls and bars of the QE2, the pathos of Lestat's aging human friend David, and the penultimate scene -- where the "body thief" finally takes Lestat's form in a Georgetown flat & clumsily takes off -- are as fine as Anne Rice ever gets. As usual, her generosity with her natural gifts is breath taking. The uncanny thing, as always, is her unbelievable ability to fully imagine something from the inside out, not miss a detail in converting it into an everday mundane reality we can accept.

Of course, there must be more than sheer inventiveness to make this work. Rice's secret is that her race horse, Lestat, is a strong projection of a modern Everyman at heart -- perpetually young, very fashion conscious, driven to a rapacity for experience by a degree of personal freedom unknown in history, intellectually curious, hungry to plumb the mysteries of God & the universe but doubtful, materially fleshbound in his own peculiar, individual way, both amoral and guilt-ridden all at once. When he finally reaches a judgment about any other character we automatically share it.

The free narrative strategy here will startle some, as the first 2 Vampire novels especially were very conventionally tight as a drum. In book 3, Queen of the Damned, the opener was a wild ride of this nature, but the book quickly cooled down into ancient historical arcana. True, this book is a little bit of "trying out on paper" -- as far as plot line and organization goes -- but that doesn't mean its a throwaway. Ultimately, it is one of the most entertaining and carefully observed books in the series -- writing for writings' sake that pays back to the penny.

Sadly, this novel and Taltos mark the point where Anne Rice "jumped the shark". "The Witching Hour" and "Queen of the Damned" were her last two good novels, and they were great. Everything afterwards, including "Tales of the Body Thief" have the hallmarks of poor writing, obviously pumped out as quickly as possible to make money, and confused theology.

A homorous tale that keeps one amused as Lestat deals with the everyday challanges of being mortal. Again, Anne Rice does a wonderful job of spinning a tale.

Welcome back to the world of the vamipre Lestat! Years have passed since his rock-star-gig and he's yet to learn his lesson, this time falling into the "Angel" trap of allowing himself to switch bodies with a mortal. A criminal, sociopathic, body-stealing mortal. The Tale of the Body Thief is more than just Lestat's quest to return himself to his "graceful, eligant" body, but a tale of Faust-like philosophy; of how an angelic, atheistic nun can come to love a vampiric devil; of mortality, for all its ups and downs; and, most importantly, of Hamlet's eternal question, what it is like to be.

If you're a fan of the series - especially of Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, it's a must read. If you prefered Queen of the Damned for its world-reaching, apocolpyse-bringing narrative, why not skip ahead... for Memnoch the Devil awaits.