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Lost Souls

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 8,975 ratings · 400 reviews

À quinze ans, Nothing, adolescent rebelle et mal dans sa peau, s'enfuit de chez ses parents. Sa route croise celle des Lost Souls, créatures étranges, vêtues de noir, qui boivent une liqueur au goût de sang. Insatiables, sensuels, sauvages, ce sont des prédateurs sans loi qui n'obéissent qu'à leurs instincts. Avec Molochai, Twig et Zillah, Nothing part en quête d'amour, de...more

Published (first published 1992)

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Jun 28, 2007 viola rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reallyreally, own

i haven't reread this since i've become an adult, and i've got the distinct feeling that doing so would just ruin it. so i likely never will.

but i'll always remember it as my firm favourite for all of high school. we almost got suspended together once. because my teachers couldn't tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction, even if i could.

so read it if you happen to be fifteen. otherwise i imagine it's a little too much. or read it if you're not fifteen and still in love with vampires a...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Debra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror-supernatural, dell-abyss-horror, sai-king-recommends

Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:

"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's...more

5 likes · like · see review

Nov 18, 2007 Brendan Detzner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A crazy, almost plotless explosion of violence, wanderlust, and sexual energy, written when the author was nineteen and possibly a little nuts. A mixture of vampires and rootless young people roam around the south, meet up, split up, meet up again, kill each other, have sex, kill each other while having sex, get lonely, do drugs, and so on. She now mostly disowns it, which only makes it more fun to read as far as I'm concerned. Kind of like reading somebody's diary, or seeing their dreams. If yo...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Matt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have the feeling I simply discovered Brite too late...Had I been 13 when I read this (and a bisexual, alcoholic orphan), I might have connected with it in ways that my 22-year-old self just wasn't able...

...But I hope not. It's one thing for genre fiction writers to develop a formula for writing their books (we see this all the time, not just in horror, but--a fortiori--in mysteries and thrillers), but Poppy seems to have developed a formula for writing chapters, even pages. All driving must t...more

8 likes · like · see review

Jul 14, 2009 Cazzie rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was the third time I read this book, and the third time I developed an overwelming desire to move to New Orleans (pre-Katrina obviously) in order to spend the rest of my days drinking absinthe and stumbling around the French Quarter in search of all the wonderfully sensual alluring vampires of both Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite's novels.
Of course I didn't do that, but the mental image conjoured up by this novel couldn't be a stronger draw. It is the first of PzB's novels to feature the love...more

7 likes · like · see review

Sep 27, 2012 Ithlilian marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy

This book is certainly dark, which is usually a good thing, but it did nothing for this book at all. There's a boy named Nothing that has sex with any and all of his friends and does drugs. Also, an abuser character that beats up his woman, a psychic boring character named Ghost, and 3 vampires that aren't very interesting. People do drugs, kill each other, kill their best friends, sleep with their fathers, some people get pregnant, some run away from home...yawn. If this book is supposed to be...more

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Jul 30, 2007 Wealhtheow rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: tween vamp fans

Shelves: urban-fantasy, paranormal_romance, queer-characters

If you're going through puberty and feeling weird, this is a great book to read. With enough vampires, gay sex, incest and goth clubbing to satisfy any young misunderstood oddball (and truthfully, I have never been in a single goth club that played "Bela Lugosi's Dead" even once, let alone every night), this is a fun piece of wish-fulfillment. Dark, twisted, unbelieavable and not particularly sophisticated, I'd recommend this to anyone wearing Crow makeup in a rural town in the midwest.

4 likes · like · see review

Sep 11, 2008 Juushika rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: status-borrowed, genre-horror, genre-fantasy, favorite-and-formative, status-owned

Fifteen-year-old Nothing runs away from his adoptive home and falls in with three vampires, one of whom is his unwitting father. In a haze of drugs, sex, and blood drinking, Nothing is drawn closer to New Orleans and the climactic events that will reveal his past and determine his future. Lost Souls is indulgent and gratuitous to the extreme, which will either delight or disgust the reader. Personally, I loved itand though I preferred the concept to the actual plot, I found Lost Souls visceral,...more Fifteen-year-old Nothing runs away from his adoptive home and falls in with three vampires, one of whom is his unwitting father. In a haze of drugs, sex, and blood drinking, Nothing is drawn closer to New Orleans and the climactic events that will reveal his past and determine his future. Lost Souls is indulgent and gratuitous to the extreme, which will either delight or disgust the reader. Personally, I loved itand though I preferred the concept to the actual plot, I found Lost Souls visceral, darkly intriguing, and difficult to put down. It's a bit over the top and perhaps not a piece of "great" literature, but I heartily recommend it.

To be quite honest, Lost Souls feels like a combination of the self-indulgent, gratuitous content of fan fiction and the skill and editing of a published book. It is an playground of sin: lush sexuality and frequent homosexual relationships, incest, teenage sexuality, unapologetic amorality, angst, plentiful violence and blood drinking, drug use, goth kids, punk kids, rock bands, vampires, and New Orleans, all of it so gratuitous that it nearly become an art form. It's over the top and hardly subtle, yet Brite writes well. Her prose is sometimes florid, but it is evocative, visceral, and as lush as the content. She creates a cast of vivid, intriguing characters and weaves their disparate lives into a single story. Sadly, the plot veers away at the end of the book, doing a disservice to one character and straying too far from Nothing and his familybut the story is often intriguing and always competent, and it will keep the reader interested and engaged until the end.

Brite is not the most subtle or most gifted author, but she writes rich prose and a strong story. As a result, her book revels in gratuitous content rather than being dragged down by it. That may not appeal to everyone, and perhaps it prevents the book from being truly "great," but the reader who enjoys it will find Lost Souls a gleefully indulgent bit of wish fulfillment. Personally, I loved the combination of content and style, and I throughly enjoyed the book. I fell in love with the characters (especially Zillah), enjoyed the glut of blood and sex and angst, and found the prose so visceral that it triggered physical reactions. I did enjoy the premise more than the actual plot, and so I preferred the first half of the book. Nonetheless: Lost Souls is a wholly immoderate, indulgent vampire story, and my inner hedonist adored it. I recommend it to anyone attracted to the premisepick it up and read the first couple of pages, and it will soon be apparent if this is the sort of book you'll love or hate.(less)

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Dec 26, 2008 Crystal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: vampire lovers

This book has haunted my waking hours since the first time I read it as a troubled teen. I needed someone to relate to in those days, I needed to know that I was not alone in this crazy, fucked-up world, and then I met Nothing. I traveled with him on his journey, meeting Zillah - a perfect, deadly, damnable, heartbreaking, irresistible bastard - and fell as much in love with him as Nothing did, living vicariously through him as he drank blood, smoked opium, and savored the taste of home on Zilla...more

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Mar 21, 2008 Corinne Stoppelli rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dans son au coeur de la Nouvelle-Orléans, Christian, créature mystérieuse et centenaire, reçoit la visite d’une adolescente étrange. Jessy, passionnée par les vampires, désire plus que tout être “mordue” par l’un d’eux pour devenir des leurs. Trois autres êtres les croiseront, vampires aux moeurs moindres qui n’hésiteront pas, au contraire de Christian, à se servir de Jessy pour assouvir leurs désirs. Jessy sortira de cette nuit vivante, mais portant en son sein une créature meurtrière.

Nothing,...more

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Mar 23, 2009 Andrew Sydlik rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror-and-fantasy

It's been a few years since I read this book, so I might be more harsh on it if I read it today, but it's a novel that's very hard to forget. What I remember the most was how Brite makes some of the most violent, disturbing things sound beautiful, or at least sensual through her description. She's very much into a "gothic" aesthetic, drawing on influences classical and modern.

Some of the scenes are a bit over-the-top, but oddly, the violence doesn't seem so much to be serving plot or even the pu...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-faves, vampires

A beautifully dark and disturbing book (as most her books are) it is a great book to read if you don't mind the gayness! I love nearly all the characters, but found Steve a little annoying. I have fallen in love with Brite's writing style, and have loved every book/short story I have read of hers.

Lost Souls is very violent, sexual and disturbing but those are the kind of things I usually enjoy reading, and this book did not disappoint. I had never heard of this author before I discovered this b...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Madeline Knight-Dixon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There’s a reason that most of the best vampire novels are not part of the mass media; because they’re dark, fucked up, and would make most people cringe. That’s how this book is. If you like things like Twilight or The Vampire Diaries (I’ll say softer vampires, not that there’s anything wrong with them) I wouldn’t recommend it. If however you like things like Dracula, True Blood, or Anne Rice, you will be obsessed with this book.

It practically drips with sensuality, but the kind of sexual imager...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, horror

Man, did I ever love this book back in the day! It's still a winner for any goth teenager who owns fake fangs and dreams about living in New Orleans. Three vampires named Zillah, Molochai and Twig roll into Mardi Gras one year. When they roll back out, they leave a pregnant teenager behind. The first chapter ends with the girl dying in childbirth after the baby eats its way out of the womb. Sound familiar? The baby, named Nothing, is left on the doorstep of a suburban home somewhere in North Car...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Ian Mapp rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What hard work this book was. It reminds me that i am not a fan of science fiction or fantasy, although at times this book was a little engaging.

It tells a basic story of some vampire youths (zillah, moloki and twig) with Zillah as the amoral leader who form a relationship with a young goth in an elder vampires (Christian's) pub in New Orleans. She gets pregnant and one thing we learn is that Vampires mothers never survive the birth.

The baby is put up for adoption and is called Nothing. He knows...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Zeo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: clothing, gore, kink-bdsm-fetish-etc, kids-these-days, gender, hiding, madness, manhood, passing, violence, power-dynamics, sex-is-awesome, spec-fic, this-waters-deeper-than-we-guessed, young-adult, vampires, substantial-substances, glbtqetc

I think the last audiobook voice artist I heard whose voice so closely matched the book being read was William Hootkins's award-winning performance of Moby Dick. I wouldn't say that Patton's read of this book was award-worthy, but his whine and simper and snarl were just right for the text, and the work put in to developing the narrative and character voices was evident.

The book is teenage-gothpunk-soap-opera-esque, which cloaks that it has some more original and clever stuff going on. Vampires...more I think the last audiobook voice artist I heard whose voice so closely matched the book being read was William Hootkins's award-winning performance of Moby Dick. I wouldn't say that Patton's read of this book was award-worthy, but his whine and simper and snarl were just right for the text, and the work put in to developing the narrative and character voices was evident.

The book is teenage-gothpunk-soap-opera-esque, which cloaks that it has some more original and clever stuff going on. Vampires are used for so many metaphorical purposes and that's great but most of them are so tired, even for us short-lived humans. When I read the part where Nothing slits his wrists to drink the blood I wondered: if the Nosferatu and Dracula-styled vampires speak to our fear of a loss of innocence, do Brite's vampires speak to adolescent death wishes as a desire to kill that innocence--or perhaps, because we can go darker why not, a social obsession with acquiring a freedom from consequence through the death of our children? Even Christian, the one vampire in the novel who acts like an adult (even, horror of horrors, having a day--well, night--job), is desperate for the approval of one of these teenager-acting vampires who live for blood and sex and sugar and alcohol and fun. This is one of several complex results of a fascinating choice Brite makes regarding what vampires are for the purposes of this novel: she makes them a distinct species, able to reproduce with humans and potentially able to live a very long time due to high regenerative capacity, where their infants kill the mother in childbirth.

This particular result, where most vampires seem stuck in a perpetual teenagerhood due to a lack of experience of consequences and responsibility, is framed by a few outliers. Christian seems to have figured out at some point that he wouldn't live as long without learning some of that, and toward the end of the book Steve's revenge is an attempt to exact consequences on people who don't believe in them. Ghost, meanwhile, seems to be the only major character who's not clawing their way out of a mythical innocence: virginal and seemingly on a separate plane from sexuality, wearing a hat with streamers on it, he is the child the story raises. Otherwise it's a novel of teenage lust for substances, sex and stardom, in the urban fantasy cloth where magical (er, wait, magickal, you can even hear the k) things turn out to really exist. Nothing, at the center of this, is already racing away from childhood: he seems repelled by it as though it's something other people do. And, in fact, those other people are humans, and he's a vampire. He sees his parents as empty and ignorant relics who impose on him by, uh, taking him in when he's a kid? Well, I tagged this as young adult for a reason. A lot of the stuff going on here is much more resonant for angsty goth teenagers like all my friends who were telling me ten years ago how much they loved Brite. That all said, I think Brite uses this teenage angst effectively, tailoring it in to part of this vampire coming of age: as her vampire infants kill their mothers, of course any early parents would seem an imposition, and of course when Nothing encounters his father later it feels natural and right to be his lover and emotional support and even drug-taking companion rather than a human concept of father and son (even as Nothing eventually castigates his father for it).

Another angle of Brite's vampire-biology choices is that there are very few women vampires, which of course would happen if childbirth always results in the death of the vampire carrying the child; we'll assume transexuality and other gender identity variance in vampires does not occur at a significant enough rate to balance out the gendered impact of this fight-your-way-out birthing method. The logical result of most of your species being male and highly sexually active, of course, is a ~~great excuse for m/m erotica~~ prevalence of men having sex with other men openly. This allows the novel to focus on a range of queer manhoods; since it focuses on an intersection between this mostly-male highly sexual vampire world and a teen gothpunk one in which bisexuality and making out with strangers are currently cool, those manhoods are able to exist and explore in a space where their desire for each other is more often normative than not, and that normativity even briefly extends to make room in the hetero-male space taken in the novel. There's a range of masculinity and femininity given possibility here for these men, although since Brite's writing what she likes she mostly focuses on thin, pale, hairless androgyny. As Brite was one of the people in the nineties talking about feeling like a man in a woman's body who was content with the body she had, at a time that that kind of language around gender was emerging, I wonder how big a role her image of these gothed-out vampires played in the creation of some of the modern goth genderqueer image and identity formation. The gendered range extends to behaviors and strengths as well as appearances, such as male character Ghost being a Sensitive, although all of this gendered range is pretty limited to the men.

Women in the book seem themselves to be ghosts of innocence, or perhaps of Mina Harker. Jessy is Mina who intends to be Dracula, whose attempt to throw away her innocence by sucking the blood of a vampire ends in finding herself raped and her own blood sucked. Richelle is Mina who was always a vampire, whose chastity--vaginally penetrative chastity, anyway--is the thing keeping her alive, until she is raped by a human (hell of an inversion of Dracula, that). And Ann is Mina the hungry: the angry small-town teenager, scared and uncertain for what the (human) men in her life are doing to her and for what it means to be doing anything with her own life other than caring for them, whose rape by one of those men and terrifying control by the other leads to running straight for the first thing that she hungers for herself, taken by a vampire, yes, but on her own terms. Were her terms good? Are they the only terms a girl with her history could create? Is hers the innocence we are trying to protect in our children?

(For what it's worth, I have yet to see a hint of evidence that children are innocent so much as naïve and lacking in information, a common result of a lack of time to acquire that information, while I have ample evidence and experience that children are intelligent, creative, curious, and clever. As far as I can tell, innocence is a trait carefully honed by those who desire it through the careful, regular application of dirt piled around the head.)

The whole portion of the plot with the twins who suck souls is an interesting idea but loses some of the structural integrity of the blood-sucking-vampire-centric parts of the book, and I'm wondering if that is what a lot of people seem to be talking about in describing this book as having no plot (the soul-sucking vampires were the novel's Tom Bombadil). It definitely has a plot, and an impressively layered and complex one considering Brite wrote it when she was a teenager. It's sappy and angsty and the language is as romantic as you'd expect it to be from a teenage goth writing gay male vampire erotica, and it's got a whole lot going on.(less)

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Jun 01, 2012 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In most of the vampire novels I’ve read, a vampire’s “birth” starts with a bite. A vampire drains a human of his or her life’s blood and has the victim replenish this lost supply by feeding from the vampire. Anne Rice's books, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, The Kindred, and many other vampire stories, whether told in books, on television, or the silver screen, adhere to this premise.

But I like Poppy Z. Brite's concept much better.

In Lost Souls, she explains how vampires have adapted to modern...more

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May 08, 2012 Drowning×in×despair×without×you×there rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone over the age of 13 that isn't a homophobe

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read, bar none. It has a great plotline, with really vivid descriptions that leave you wanting more than anything to be able to believe that you have experienced the French Quarter, or Twig, Zillah and Moolochai's van. The characters are, for the most part, well-developed, and fleshed out so that they might as well be real. But two are my favorites, having captured my sympathy from the get-go. Nothing and Ghost, the two most sensitive. I like Not...more This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read, bar none. It has a great plotline, with really vivid descriptions that leave you wanting more than anything to be able to believe that you have experienced the French Quarter, or Twig, Zillah and Moolochai's van. The characters are, for the most part, well-developed, and fleshed out so that they might as well be real. But two are my favorites, having captured my sympathy from the get-go. Nothing and Ghost, the two most sensitive. I like Nothing because the very frist scence in which he is sitting in his room, alone, basking in the protective shroud of darkness, made me immediately think of myself. Nothing's exploits throughout the adventure became my own, so closely can our reactions and emotions resemble each other. My fondness for Ghost arises from his innocence in the face of all that is evil, especially when he is more attuned to it than most. His loyalty to Steve is unparalleled, and his kindness toward Nothing made me smile. The way that Zillah treated Nothing in the end reminded me of when my father grows angry with me--everything suddenly becomes my fault. For this reason, I resented Zillah. Even before that, when he appeared to be a decent guy, there was something about him that I just didn't like. He seemed too superficial, too concerned with the present moment outwardly, though all the while he was plotting his next move, calculating his every step to keep his cohorts in line. This was much easier before Nothing came along, because Nothing inherited his father's extraordinary brain, besides the advantage of knowing how to manipulate emotions--and often choosing not to. The way Nothing views the world is much like some of Edgar Allan Poe's narration: it has the tone of a small child, yet the sinister, unfeeling undertone of evil, of disregard for human life. Nothing is not necessarily a killer, but he is a realist, in his own right. He sees the world the way it is, and grudgingly accepts it. His killing of Lane was a good example of this; he did. He felt the irrepresible hunger that comes from being an unfed vampire, and he realized that he would have to kill his friend to survive. He tries to justify it by saying that it was Lane's own fault for following him, but this is just a stab at mental self-preservation. On another level, his love for Christian shows just how badly Nothing wanted someone to believe in, a family to be proud of. Christian knew of him as an infant, before his stint in purgatory with the humans who tried and failed to raise him up into something like themselves. Christian wanted to protect Nothing from Zillah, too, though it may have been hardly noticible. He and Nothing were the closest pair of all the vampires we were introduced to, though they spent the least time together. Christian also knew Nothing's mother, something that would have eaten away at the teenager's curiosity. The old one, in a way, would have seemed like more of a dad to Nothing, even though he met Zillah, and the truth was eventually revealed by Christian. The way Steve thinks he takes care of Ghost is denial; he couldn't possibly be naive enough to believe that. Ghost keeps Steve emotionally stable (As stable as Steve could be, anyway.) and doesn't inform him of the worst of the visions he has. If Steve had been the one with the gift, he would have gone insane and killed himself as a child; it takes someone especially strong to be able to handle things like that. Not even just strength--sensetivity. The characters who could master this were by far and away the best off.
All in all, one fantastic book that everyone should read at least once, even if the gay stuff offends you. For that matter, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone under the age of...ehh...13, because of some graphic scenes of a sexual nature. So, you have been warned... (less)

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Oct 23, 2011 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

Poppy Z. Brite's first novel offers up just over 300 pages of dreamy, blood and sex-filled prose. I was well into it before I noticed that it didn't have much of a plot. There are vampire characters, non-vampire characters, lots of drugs and alcohol, and lots of boy-on-boy sex. (Nothing -- that is one of the character's names -- mentions that he comes from the Goth, punk crowd where bisexuality is in fashion.) But plots involve characters that develop and that you may actually care about. Brite'...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Darlene rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, books-given-for-review, read-in-2011

I received this audiobook for review from Crossroad Press through Audiobook Jukebox's Solid Gold Reviewer Program. I did not receive any compensation for my review, and the views expressed herein are my own.

I love vampires, and I love audiobooks – so I jumped at the chance to review a vampire audiobook! It was not at all what I expected.

Lost Souls is about three androgynous bisexual (although mostly homosexual) vampires: Zillah (the leader) and his two sidekicks (Molochai and Twig). They come t...more I received this audiobook for review from Crossroad Press through Audiobook Jukebox's Solid Gold Reviewer Program. I did not receive any compensation for my review, and the views expressed herein are my own.

I love vampires, and I love audiobooks – so I jumped at the chance to review a vampire audiobook! It was not at all what I expected.

Lost Souls is about three androgynous bisexual (although mostly homosexual) vampires: Zillah (the leader) and his two sidekicks (Molochai and Twig). They come to New Orleans to party during Mardi Gras and they come across a bar that is owned by a vampire named Christian. There is an underage human girl (Jessy) at the bar, and she winds up having sex with Zillah while Christian has sex with Molochai and Twig. Jessy discovers that she is pregnant long after Zillah and his cronies have left New Orleans. Knowing that human females tend to not survive vampire childbirths, Christian takes Jessy in and has a sexual relationship with her throughout her pregnancy. She does indeed die during childbirth and has a boy whom Christian names “Nothing.” Hoping to spare him of his destiny, Christian leaves Nothing on a doorstep and hopes the couple will love him as their own and that Nothing will never know of his true identity.

The book then jumps ahead 15 years when Nothing is a teenager, and he feels that he is totally misunderstood. He decides to run away and find the singers of a band whom he idolizes, and he hitches rides to the town where they live. He turns some tricks here and there, and then is picked up by Zillah, Molochai, and Twig. The vampire trio first intended to drain him, but instead have sex with him. Yes, that’s right...Zillah has sex with his son, unbeknownst to him.

From here, the book continues on a downward spiral. This was not so much a vampire story, but more a story of getting high, getting drunk, and getting laid. I am a pretty open-minded person, and I wasn’t so much bothered by the M/M and M/M/M and even M/M/M/M action – different strokes for different folks and all that. I am not one to judge, and it takes a lot to shock me. But it did really bother me when Zillah and Nothing hooked up. But wait, it gets worse: They do eventually discover that Zillah is Nothing’s father, but they still continue having a sexual relationship! And Christian even tries to justify it saying that there are so few of their race left and that, if they can make each other happy, why not? Ok, this is disturbing. Christian also eventually has sex with Nothing, which brings on a whole new level of “ewwwwww” since he had sex with Nothing’s mother and is now having sex with her son.

Let's recap: This book contains teenage prostitution, incest, sex with minors (statutory rape), and there was even an incident of rape. There was also another occurrence of incest, this time father/daughter, that I won’t even go into because it was just too offensive.

I did not find this book entertaining. I found it dark and disturbing. It was not at all what I expected, and I will be steering clear of this author in the future!

The narrator, Chris Patton, did a fine job with the book. His voice was clear and expressive, and he was probably what kept me listening despite the book’s content.

MY RATING: 1 star. I did not enjoy it at all. This was not for me.(less)

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Sep 20, 2011 Brianna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, gay-characters

A trainwreck of blood, gay sex, drugs, and booze. A bit of a disappointment, yet I still couldn't put it down. How should I put it...it was unsatisfying in the right way? I had very mixed feelings, but overall they were positive.
The character Nothing was the book's biggest downfall for me, I simply couldn't stand him no matter how hard I tried. It was impossible to sympathize with him, and much of the book is spent focusing on his pity party. The vampires were disgusting and childish, which was...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Lost Souls is a curiosity. Possibly the most striking thing about it is the new take it offers on the figure of the vampire -- here, it's definetly a choice. Aside from this, it's one of the most haunting books I've ever read -- the characters are ones that'll stay with you forever, if you let them. Mostly, though, it's wonderful for the way it re-imagines common relationships - those between parent and child, friends, and lovers all come under scrutiny and are mercilessly revised and reproduced...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Robyn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

You have to be a little insane to like this book. It's best if you're a morbid teenager, who enjoys vampires, goth music and sexual deviancy, but the plain crazy places adolescence takes a lot of people can put you in just the right mindset.

This is probably somewhere in the top ten most messed up things I've ever read, and while I remember just eating it up at a teenager, positively reveling in the fact that if a single adult I knew picked it up they would be shocked right out of their shoes, I...more

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Nov 16, 2010 Max rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh boy! Lost Souls & I go way back to 2004 when i was only 14. I was exactly like Nothing, the protagonist of the story; lost, goth and "pale" (Just a heads up! You'll be seeing that word so many times!), rebellious, bored and oh so very angsty! I loved this book, i loved the semen, i loved the gothic girl in the bar, loved the purple glasses, the velvet clothes, the incest, the love, the rock'n'roll, the chocoalteness in Molochai, the chartreuse as green as limes (oh who can forget!) and th...more

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May 08, 2010 Edmund Colell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In terms of contemporary vampire fiction, Lost Souls stands out very well. Hell, it is my favorite contemporary vampire story PERIOD. Maybe it's the music references, maybe it's the sexuality, maybe it's the brutality, maybe it's the memorable characters. Having read it quite a while ago, I still remember the Haley-Joel-Osment-with-fangs Nothing, the disenfranchised band members Ghost and Steve (the former a clairvoyant and the latter an abusive alcoholic), Steve's ex-girlfriend (... okay, forgo...more

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Dec 08, 2009 BarkLessWagMore rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

I brought this book with me on vacation, along with 6 others (what can I say, I'm finicky). After putting one book aside out of complete boredom I feared nothing would hold my attention. I ended up plowing my way through 280 pages of Lost Souls before I knew it. Being that its been nearly 12 years since I originally read it, I wasn't surprised to realize that only vague images and memories of lush prose had stuck with me and that I had forgotten all about the basic plot line. I figured jaded me...more

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Jul 10, 2009 Jeff Chappell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who appreciates intelligent horror/dark fiction.

Felt like visiting some old friends, so I read this again. As Brite's first published novel, it is not without its minor faults -- her prose is sometimes a little labored, going to too great lengths to illustrate a metaphor -- but then it is still head and shoulders above many works by popular, frequently published authors. It definitely stands the test of time; hard to believe this came out in 1992 (God, I'm getting old).

And for those of you who eschew her later works because they're not all g...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Serith rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Goth teens

Shelves: glbt, dropped

This review is based on putting the book down after a few chapters. I think I set my hopes up too high for this one. The description makes it sound like something I'd love (horror, vampires, and gay themes)... but the characters were just too dry to keep me interested. The author should do a lot more showing than telling: Nothing keeps moaning about wanting to get away from it all... but from what? What was so bad in his life to make him feel this way? He did not even care if his parents were up...more

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May 28, 2010 Michael Alexander rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Glorious, glorious unvarnished teen id. I echo the review that says it's got all the over-the-top indulgence of fanfic, all the loving attention to detail and narrative drive of commercial fiction. Another one of those books that if I'd discovered it young enough to take it seriously, I might not have made it through high school. A billion band references, a handful of bloody heartless bloodsucking murders, 5 different kinds of adolescent loneliness and isolation, all the good sex is between the...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Louise Morris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone over the age of 16

There are four stories going on in this book. There is the story of Nothing on a mission to discover what he is about. There is the story of Zilah, Malechi, and Twig, who are three roaming vampires that are up to no good. Christian who is settled with a bar that becomes the main focus. And the last is the story of Steve and Ghost. It all comes to a head in New Orleans when Zilah gets Steve's ex-girlfriend pregnant and she dies. Revenge is the top order. Very chilling.

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Horror

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Fantasy

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Fantasy > Paranormal

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Fantasy > Urban Fantasy

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Glbt

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Glbt > Gay

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About Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite) is an American author born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Born a biological female, Brite has written and talked much about his gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. He self-identifies almost completely as a homosexual male rather than female, and as of 2011 has started taking testosterone injections.

He lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia...more

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Quotes from Lost Souls

“If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.” — 37 people liked it

“Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.” — 23 people liked it

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