Lost Souls (1992)

Ghost is a delicate, beautiful boy who sees into people's minds and his dreams often come true. He is in a band called Lost Souls? with Steve, an angry, alchoholic college drop-out. Ghost keeps Steve from going right over the edge, but he couldn't keep him from raping his girlfriend, Ann, and since the end of their relationship Steve has been sinking deeper into depression, rage and alcoholism.

Meanwhile, several worlds away in suburbia, lives Nothing, a lonely fifteen year old who can't connect with his painfully normal adoptive parents. He dreams of running away and finding the boys from Lost Souls? and for them to be his family. Soon he finds himself running away and hitching out towards Missing Mile, North Carolina, where the band is from.

But vampires roam the dark streets, and they are not the sparkly kind. Brite's vampires are not undead - they are a separate species - and they'll rip your throat out and roll around in your blood. Zillah, Twig and Molochai are beautiful vampires who drive around in their van drinking, tripping and picking up hitch hikers, whom they party with, sleep with, and then eat. Zillah is also Nothing's real father, having impregnated a girl at a party in New Orleans fifteen years earlier. Nothing ate his way out of his mother's womb, killing her, as all vampire babies do.

When the beautiful Zillah and his entourage pick up the wandering Nothing, they do not know his parentage, but are surprised to find another like them - and the fifteen year old quickly becomes his father's lover.

Brite's prose is luscious. This book is not for the faint of heart - there is lots of blood, gore, sex, rape and incestuous themes run throughout - but Brite's lyrical descriptions and haunted characters really bring the story to life. And Ghost's goodness and Nothing's inner conflicts help anchor it.

A real horror vampire story (as opposed to the urban fantasy/paranormal romance kind that populates the shelves these days) Brite's work luxuriates in sex, blood, music and drugs. Lost Souls can be beautiful, but its also gruesome. Visions of being a Goth teen in the 90s - I first read these books as a teenager. They're still good now, though they feel a bit too heavy on the teenage angst and darkness and all that. I can roll my eyes now at Nothing's oh-woe-is-me attitude towards his "too normal, too nice" adoptive parents, but I remember when I was an angsty teen myself, that struck a strange chord with me. Brite's writing also feels a bit over-the-top now, pages of flowery descriptions oozing darkness - yet it's still somehow delectable - lush and fascinating.

Recommendation: NOT for the faint of heart, the easily squicked, or those who think vampires should sparkle. ( )

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. ( )

Dark , warm and in places very wrong . This book remains a top fave in my list .
Many have gone on to copy this style yet Poppy knows how to deliver a story that will make you question sm much and find your still talking about it ten years later.
This book was a huge hit here in England on the goth scene in the 90's and i feel it is a story that will stand the test of time. Nothing and ghost are a pure joy - Amazing read ( )

Group V

Listened to the Springbrook audiobook version. Enjoyable enough. Bechdel: fail. ( )