The Tale of the Body Thief
core novel 1992 The Vampire Chronicles
Record
| First published | 1992 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.77 (93,720 ratings, collected 2026-08-26) |
| Page count | 464 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780679405283 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
In The Tale of the Body Thief, a depressed and isolated Lestat is approached by Raglan James, a mysterious figure who claims he can arrange a temporary body swap, offering Lestat the chance to briefly experience mortal life again after centuries as a vampire. Against the warnings of his friends, including Louis and David Talbot, Lestat accepts the offer out of restless curiosity about what he has lost. The exchange proceeds as promised, but James quickly betrays the arrangement, leaving Lestat stranded in a fragile human body while James absconds in Lestat's own powerful vampire form. Lestat must find a way to recover his true body and undo the betrayal before James can do lasting damage with the vampiric power he has stolen.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Vampire Chronicles
- Series: The Vampire Chronicles core; position 4 of 13 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Anne Rice
Notes
- From the series record (The Vampire Chronicles): A continuous, decades-spanning narrative of vampire immortals told mostly through Louis and Lestat, running from the author's 1976 debut to her final volume in 2018; treated as complete following the author's death in December 2021.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Vampire Chronicles: position 4 of 13: previous The Queen of the Damned (1988) · next Memnoch the Devil (1995)
Sources
← The Vampire Chronicles dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.