This is not one of Anne Rice's better books. I'd enjoyed Lestat de Lioncourt's company up to this point, but in this story he is just too vain, narcissistic, shallow and, well, inconsequential.

Since being made a vampire Lestat has always longed for his mortal days. Indeed, it is the loneliness that immortality brings that leads many a vampire to suicide. Lestat even attempts suicide himself by flying high over the Gobi desert to burn himself to a cinder under the heat of the sun. Alas, all the ancient blood he has drunk (think Magnus, Marius and Akasha - especially Akasha) has rendered him almost indestructible. Instead of meeting death, he endures agony under the sun's rays and soon recovers.

After his recovery, he begins to notice a man who turns up and makes contact with him. The man is ungainly and awkward. He gives books to Lestat for him tyo read, and there is a message hidden within the text. Eventually, this man reveals to Lestat that he is a body thief and that he wishes to trade bodies with the vampire Lestat himself.

The body in which he appears is not his own: he stole that with a certain spiritual deftness and then uses it to entice Lestat into agreeing to his plan. His plan is to switch bodies with Lestat for a period of a few days. Lestat will pay the man a vast sum for the privelege, and the man will enjoy being a vampire for a few days.

Of course, you can see the risks...

How contrived the plot is. Lestat is desperate to feel the sun on his face once more as a mortal, and then the "body thief" turns up with the mechanism to achieve his desire. To make matters worse, this man - Raglan James - is a real unsavoury character. So of course, we are supposed to urge Lestat not to go ahead with the switch. And of course he does.

How predictable.