The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice (RIP #3)

Book Summary (from Goodreads)

Vampire-hero, rockstar and seducer of millions, Lestat is an immortal extraordinaire...

But Lestat yearns to be reborn a mortal. Tormented to the depths of his vampire soul he wanders aimlessly across the globe, from Amsterdam to the Amazon jungle, until he meets the one being who can grant him his wish. He is the Body Thief, more sinister and evil than any daemon. But when Lestat surrenders his vampire body he discovers what he'd so long forgotten: the awkwardness and anguish of being human...

My Review

This is my third R.I.P. review.I had high hopes for this book. I really like Anne Rice and the 3 first installments of The Vampire Chronicles didn’t disappoint me, even with the awful adaptation to cinema for The Queen of the Damned. Sadly I was disappointed, and how. 

The premise was really good. Lestat, after his encounter with Akasha is now powerful beyond limits, and he is starting to get bored with his unstoppable, immortal existence. Then someone appears in his life, someone who is capable of switching bodies, and he proposes and exchange with Lestat.

I don’t think it counts as a spoiler if I tell you that Lestat accepts the deal…but it all went downhill for me after that. Whereas we could’ve explored more of Lestat being human, all I got was him complaining about being human, how disgusted he is with himself (poop? Yikes! Peeing? What is that?) how he doesn’t like it finally, how awful people smell now…see, this one was particularly confusing for me, because as a vampire, he was supposed to have heightened senses, hence he should’ve been able to smell humans more before, not when he became human. And I know it’s been centuries since he became a vampire, but surely you do not forget certain basic stuff about being human, particularly when you still leave amongst them and see how they “work”. 

All the interactions with the Thief where borderline predictable, from the type of person that he was to what he did to escape. And the conversations with David, although far more interesting than the ones with the Thief or Louis itself, where a little bit disconnected in my opinion.

One of the comments in the back of the book is that it was fast paced…I respectfully disagree. Not once was I eagerly turning pages.  I did skim over paragraphs a couple of time, more to my regret, but it was just so slow some times. 

I still want to read the rest of the Vampire Chronicles, but I sure hope that the next one picks up the pace