Lost Souls

By: Poppy Brite

Narrated by: Christ Patton

Vampires...they ache, they love, they thirst for the forbidden. They are your friends and lovers, and your worst fears.

“A major new voice in horror fiction...an electric style and no shortage of nerve.” (Booklist)

At a club in Missing Mile, N.C., the children of the night gather, dressed in black, look for acceptance. Among them are Ghost, who sees what others do not; Ann, longing for love; and Jason, whose real name is Nothing, newly awakened to an ancient, deathless truth about his father, and himself.

Others are coming to Missing Mile tonight. Three beautiful, hip vagabonds - Molochai, Twig, and the seductive Zillah, whose eyes are as green as limes - are on their own lost journey, slaking their ancient thirst for blood, looking for supple young flesh.

They find it in Nothing and Ann, leading them on a mad, illicit road trip south to New Orleans. Over miles of dark highway, Ghost pursues, his powers guiding him on a journey to reach his destiny, to save Ann from her new companions, to save Nothing from himself....

“An important and original work...a gritty, highly literate blend of brutality and sentiment, hope and despair.”(Science Fiction Chronicle)

©1992 Poppy Z. Brite (P)2019 David N. Wilson

Teenage nostalgia

One of my favorite books in high school reread it for a bit of nostalgia. Holds up surprisingly well some parts are cringy but so was high school. Story is well structured and paced. Brite is great at building ambiance in all her writing.

Nomadic vampires

Poppy Z Brite’s Lost Souls is a vampire tale. A nomadic coven of vampires impregnates a girl in New Orleans. She dies in childbirth, but a vampire bartender places the infant with a normal family in Maryland. The boy grows up to be a loner teenager. After discovering some information about his birth, he runs away in search of a band, Lost Souls. Along the way, he encounters the vampire coven. The band consists of a duo with one member possessing clairvoyant abilities. Everyone ends up back in New Orleans after the head vampire impregnates the girlfriend of the other member of Lost Souls who are trying to protect her and exact revenge on the vampires. They succeed in killing the vampire head, but the loner teenager convinces them to leave him and the rest along.

Brite offers a convoluted tale that inserts some homoerotic elements. Narration is good with smooth pacing.

bad french

its a wonferful novel. i read the print version snd loved it, but tge narrator just cant pronounce the french names of the quarter.

One of my favorites

I originally read this senior year of high school. It is just as good now as it was then.

okay

I read this as a young goth teenage misfit and it spoke to me then. now it's just a nostalgic read like visiting a past life.