Customer Reviews

Lost Souls

5 star:		(167)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

At the age of 22, I am still caught up in a bit of my teen angst, but I was never so reminded as when I stepped into the whirlwind of PZB's, "Lost Souls". Whether you were a tragic outcast or not, you will be able to understand that nuances of a small town and how it feels to be misunderstood.

It's easy to fall in love with Ghost, simple yet complex, sensitive and mystical. To lust after Zillah, beautiful, passionate, green eyed, and brutal. To care so much for Nothing, to take him into your arms and show him that the world is not as fake and cruel as it seems (though it may well be sometimes).

Even though I knew the ending (unfortunately read a review that spelled it out for me), I enjoyed every moment of the book. It was at times confusing in it's madness, yet it was littered and sparkled with magic at every turn of the page.

I have not been able to get this book out of my mind. It's sensuality and overwhelming contrast of light and dark make this book an amazing read for anyone who isn't afraid of something that's a bit different.

The only problem is with letting go of the book when one is finished reading :).

Several years ago I walked into a book store and my eyes fell upon Poppy Z. Brites Lost Souls. At the time it was her only novel. I bought the book initially just based on the fact that I liked the cover art. Now my original copy is held together with duct tape. I love this book. It is fascinating, original, dark, erotic, and in my opinion one of the best horror books out there. I have re-read this book more times then any other. I still get hooked into the story line and feel for the characters that I have grown to love. This novel explores many topics that are fairly common in horror fiction. Yet, Poppy breathes new life and fascination into both vampires, misguided youth, and rock n' roll. This book is almost the modern day tale of vampires. I recommend it to all dark horror lover, vampire fans, and anyone who loves a well crafted and executed story. If this is your first time trying Brite--be warned her words are potent, strong, and filled with images. This is the original Poppy book. I urge you to give it a try, and maybe, just maybe, a few years from now you will find your copy of this book held together with duct tape from too many late night readings.

As a fan of Storm Constantine and other writers in this vein (pun not intended), I was recommended to PZB's works multiple times. I finally decided to start with the first-written, although others warned me that it was not her best.

And it was definitely interesting. This was definitely a new take on the vampire renaissance heralded by Anne Rice and others. These vamps are dark but not romantically so, decadent but not admirably so, and brutally cruel. I was wowed by the writing style, which was lush (not overly so) and yet very engaging; the uniqueness of the vampires, who truly are a different species (with their own subspecies); the blatant inclusion of homoerotic material that other writers often only touch upon glancingly, if at all (and which is very satisfyingly fulfilled here).

The problem? I hate the characters.

Call me jaded, or maybe just too old to understand. Nothing was very much a nothing, to me. I couldn't get into his teenaged angst---which, granted, had some real basis in his being "different". But some of his angst had to do with things like, "My parents want me to clean my room because I haven't bathed in days and it reeks." Or, "Nobody understands me except the singer on this underground tape I got from my friends, so I'm going to run away from home to find him." It's really hard for me to find sympathy with those kinds of laments, even though I remember feeling the same way when I was a teenager (well, I had no problem with baths). I guess it bothers me because I'm an adult, now, and this sort of pointless whining just seems stupid, not angsty.

I also hated Zillah, who's a psychopath but not even a particularly interesting one---just one who seems to be blessed with a kind of bizarre magic that helps him attract weaker souls and pervert them into strangeness or stupidity. He does this to every female character in the story; one of the women, Ann, was a strong and interesting character until she has a liaison with Zillah. Then her brains and strength just seem to... vanish. The other female character meets the same fate, earlier in the novel, but she didn't really start out as a strong character (her motivations were completely unclear), so I didn't really mind in her case. She was too uninteresting for me to care about her---which is the problem for most of the characters in the story.

I do like some of the characters. Christian, for example, is a none-too-subtle poke at the more romanticized, old-worldish vamps of other authors like Rice; he too falls under Zillah's spell, and is basically dragged into the more crude, brutal, modern vamp world PZB has created here. His corruption is actually interesting to watch. Ghost is fascinating---although his devotion to his uber-macho, rapist buddy Steve just leaves me cold. It's as if a subtle theme of this story is Why Smart People Do Really Dumb Things.

Still, I'll definitely recommend this story, if only for its fresh and original take on vampirism. Its takes on teen angst, relationship abuse, friendship, good/evil, etc., are more common.

Of all the vampire books I have ever read, Lost Souls is among the finer gems. The characters are brought to life by vivid descriptions in modern jargon, and the turn of events is extremely plausible (minus perhaps the vampirism).

I was impressed by how quickly the books reads. Its simplicity is one of its finer points...and is perhaps what seduces the reader into wanting to learn more about Nothing, the half-human, half-vampire in search of his past--and future.

All of the characters are extremely memorable, making this a book you'll want to sit of the shelves. The rock band, Steve and Ghost, exemplify a lot of the traits that make us human. Ghost, the seer, has an implicit understanding of nature--both human and unhuman--that is uncanny.

Compared to the esteemed Anne Rice, this book will give you a different flavor to the lives of vampires and their world view. In many ways, the authors are not comparable because of Brite's focus on comtemporary times. She depicts vampires not as gods, but as a separate race without Rice's romanticism and eroticism. This does not in any way detract from Lost Souls. It puts Brite in a category of her own.

This book is a definite must for anyone interested in vampire lore. I look forward to reading other books of Brite and encourage anyone to use this book as a spring-board into her novels.

Lost Souls is not only the best vampire book I've ever read, (sorry Anne Rice, but yours just can't cut it anymore) it is the most beautiful and haunting novel I've ever come across. I feel particualrly drawn to the character of Nothing, the vampire child fathered by the mad Zillah. I identify with Nothing's cold world, and his desire to find acceptance. He finds it with a group of punk subculture vampires, Zillah, Molochai, Twig, and the enigmatic Christian. Along the way we meet Steve and the psychic Ghost, who follows these lost souls to their destinies. I am almost finished reading this book, and will immediately go on to Poppy Z. Brite's other works. "Lost Souls" captures the underground world of the punk vampire. Lonely, loving, and constantly dangerous. Reading this book is like being drunk on a good bottle of whiskey tinged with blood, until you realize its only Poppy's beautiful words that haunt you. You won't be able to put this down. I know I can't!

Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite's first novel, may be shockingly perverse to those not already immersed in the darker waters of fiction and life, but with its lurid omnisexuality wrapped in a blood-encased poultice of horror, it stands as a mesmerizing achievement, lending ever newer blood to the world of vampirology. While some may chide Brite's vampires for being so awfully unlike the debonair charmer Count Dracula or even the grossly disfigured Nosferatu, herein actually lies the strength of the novel. In Brite's world, good and evil do not exist, and if they do, they are oftentimes quite difficult to tell apart. There is not one character in this entire novel who is even within earshot of the bells of Normality, no one whom in all truth could be called a hero in the traditional sense. This is a world encased in darkness; even the sunlight filters through halfheartedly, as if it realizes it is just fooling itself when it pretends it can wash away the darkness with its feeble rays of light. The characters are exquisite yet deeply tainted, some by blood, some by drink and drugs, and some by the shiftier shadows that like to entomb the mind of man insidiously and secretly.

If nothing else, one cannot say these characters are forgettable. We first meet Christian, a centuries-old vampire running a bar in New Orleans. One Mardi Gras night, a trio of his brethren come into the bar and entrance him with their modern ways of dalliance, unrestrained pleasure-seeking, and vitality. Christian is both literally and figuratively cold and dead inside, but the vampire trio are electric and unrestrained. Twig and Molochai are almost childlike in their recklessness, but Zilla is something special. His mysterious chartreuse-enlivened eyes do all but breathe fire through their entrancingly hypnotic gazes. A young girl in the bar that night falls under Zilla's spell, and many months after Zilla and his friends have left New Orleans, a baby is born. The baby grows up in Maryland, knowing he is different from everyone else; his name is Nothing, and at fifteen he sets off on a journey of self-discovery. His first destination is Missing Mile, North Carolina, home of the underground musical group Lost Souls?, but he meets up, as if by fate, with Zilla's band of marauding vampires and finds the family he has been aching for all his life. He and Zilla share their bodies as well as their feasts of blood, and Nothing has little trouble adjusting to the life he knows he was born to lead; he is a vampire. Steve and Ghost, the members of Lost Souls?, enter the picture because of Nothing's strong identification with their music. Ghost is the most remarkable character in the novel, a young man blessed with a gift of seeing into the minds of others, both alive and dead; his gift can be a curse at times, though, because he knows the pain of everyone. Steve is his best friend, a perpetual drunk with a bad temper that caused him to lose the one girl he had ever loved. All the roads of each character meet in Missing Mile, and the events and tragedies set in motion lead the reader from there back to New Orleans, ending in a climax I found remarkably well done.

Poppy Z. Brite is something of an acquired taste. The sexuality of her characters is strikingly extreme, and Zilla's band of vampires are particularly uncaring in their choice of partners; the life essence can be found in a fluid other than blood, and these creatures of the night delight in sharing themselves with each other as they race through life on a perpetual search for kicks. Drug abuse runs rampant among everyone in these pages, and the act of rape is consigned to one of those who comes closest to being a good guy. As disturbing as the intense erotic aspect of Brite's writing may be, however, it lies at the core of her vampiric creations. Zilla and his gang have no morals, no code of honor, no feelings whatsoever; there is not a trace of immorality found among them because they are completely amoral. Brite raises the world of vampirism out of its traditional trappings, and therein lies the magic that sets Brite apart as a shockingly new, amazingly effective voice in modern horror.

I bought this book on pure fluke. Sassy magazine (when it was still cool) did a profile on this beautiful woman with red hair and fishnets and Docs, and the blurb spoke of her newest book (at that time) "Drawing Blood", describing it as a "haunted house love story." Sounded interesting, but they also mentioned she'd written a vampire road trip from hell book called "Lost Souls." Hmmmm, I thought. Vampires. I like vampires. So I bought it the very next day.

Possibly, this was the best decision I've ever made in concerns to a book purchase, because Poppy Z. Brite kicked my a**, knocked me to the floor, hauled me back up, and kicked my a** again. Never before have I read a "horror" (I use that term somewhat sarcastically) novel that was writen as dark and lush as "Lost Souls" was.

Normally, I would hate the pop culture references, but then I realized this was because most horror is written and by old, white men. Even Anne Rice was downright embarassing in The Vampire Lestat/The Queen of the Damned (though the latter is one of my faves) with her rock band and concerts and everything. Ew. Brite kicks Rice's a**, first off, and second, she's one of *us* -- and that makes all the difference in the world.

I fell in love with Nothing, Ghost and most of all, Zillah, the doomed vampire, who walked into Ghost's house with a baseball bat (which he had grabbed from Steve, granted) and a grin and proceeded to wreak havoc unlike I have ever enjoyed before. Eyes like limes, pierced and tattooed and downright *mean* -- this character could carry an entire series on his own. Damn shame, really.

This book is one of my all-time favorites, and I recommend it to everyone I come across. Read it, and be amazed.

Lost Souls is my favorite vampire horror. It is more terrifying than Salem's Lot and definitely more alluring and bewitching than Anne Rice's Vampire Series. Lost Souls was written in 1992 but till today still transcends most contemporary horros in terms of plot and characters. Lost Souls shines with its own unique emotional intensity that most contemporary horrors sadly lack. Brite's Vampires are unique personalities and she did such a brilliant job describing and justifying their lusts that I sympathize with them - haunted Christian, amoral Zillah, mindless Molochai and Twig and of course Nothing who has to learn to live with his aloneness among his kind. I was hoping for a better ending for Nothing but I guess Brite knows best. Ghost is of course my favorite character and I seldom have any in horrors. I will remember Ghost because of his love for Steve, his care for Nothing and Anne and his genuine goodness and vulnerability. I only with there is more of Lost Souls but one is always wistful when a book is as great as Lost Souls... Lost Souls will remain my favorite as long as I continue to read...

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 10 years since my friend Damien told me that he had just read the most disturbing novel of his life, one in which "loss of innocence" is suspect as the innocence is never so innocent, but the vampirism is more cruel than pretty.

This book is about a teenage goth who is distinguished from other goths as he really is a vampire. Running away he hooks up with his family and they find that his taste for blood is more than teenage angst. Incest, bad births, betrayal, obsessed wanderers and vampires of utter horror is what you get with this book.

Unlike the works of Anne Rice, the vampires possess a dark and horrible beauty but they don't pretend to be decent souls. They are thoroughly horrid people that shouldn't have survived for human lifetimes much less centuries. The twist of having vampires borne but eating their way out of their mothers is truly twisted as is most of this book. Rendered in some of the most lucid and poetic prose ever, you are enraptured and seduced by the deadly horror of this text. The only other vampire book that even comes close is Dark Dance by Tanith Lee.

I read an interview with Poppy Z. Brite complaining that she doesn't want to be called the vampire writer, but this book is still her best work and she has yet to write a book that so balances the beautiful and the horrid. Exquisite Corpse might be more disturbing but it doesn't stay with you like this one.

Spoiler Alert!

I had heard several rave reviews about this novel so I read it and was disappointed. What you must keep in mind I am 29. I think had I read this book at 14 or so, I would have been enthralled with it.

It borrows liberally from superior works, most notably Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. There was a lot of extraneous expository writing that felt like a waste of time reading, overused adjectives (apparently everyone in Poppy Brite's world has "spidery" hands, smokes clove cigarettes, lives in proximity to kudzu trees). And of course it had the typical "let's kick some vampire ass" ending.

Lost Souls is almost entirely a landscape of young, beautiful, skinny, white males, mostly making out with each other or killing people in graphic detail. It just comes across more as titillation rather than trying to say something about the human condition or go beyond being entertainment in the same vein as rock videos. One reviewer mentioned it as being like fan-fiction, and I got that vibe as well. It also makes the fatal mistake of trying to make vampire rock stars, which is tantamount to trying to run a car on water instead of gas. It's a great idea if it could work, but alas, it never does.

The book also takes "Goth culture," for lack of a better term, a bit too seriously for it's own good. Besides the occasional sarcastic quip from Steve, the book doesn't acknowledge any of the complete absurdity of some of the situations described, the way a good "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode would. It is very much written for the serious, Marilyn Manson-listening, dressed-in-black set. It doesn't really try to transcend it's genre, so it's difficult to recommend such a book to anyone who doesn't fall into that category. Even then, I'm sure many self-proclaimed "Goths" would cringe at the thought of reading this.

That said, I will grudgingly give Brite some points for her additions/twists to the vampire myth (Mostly the pregnancy- vampire hybrid ideas - I can only hope they were of her own invention and I'm giving her credit justly) Ghost, I thought was particularly nicely rendered as a character. There were some interesting visual ideas (Christian as a roadside rose stand vendor comes to mind). I managed to make it to the end at least, and take the time to think enough about the book to give it a review, so I think that shows that I have a least a modicum of respect for it.

Bottom line- I wouldn't recommend it to readers older than 20-25, and who aren't already interested in vampire fiction.