Rating: 
Summary: Starts out great, but grows tiring...
Review: I love vampire stories! I WAS also one of the "goth" crowd in high school...many yrs ago, before it was labeled such. So when I stumbled upon this book and started reading, I couldn't believe I had somehow missed it when it came out over 10 yrs ago! I was instantly hooked. I consider myself to be an open-minded individual, so the gay tendencies of the characters did not bother me. I also liked her twist on vampires as being of another race altogether...
However, after reading about two-thirds through, I had grown tired of the vampire life-style that Ms. Brite created. It is extremely dark and depressing.
After being a long-time fan of the vampire world and reading and fantasizing about how "cool" it would be to "be" one, Ms. Brite's story changed all that. I realized that whereas other tellings of vampire stories have the reader feeling as if they would love to be one too, this story had the reverse effect...at least for me. It is a much more "realistic" telling of the horrors, sadness and loneliness that it would truly be like. She does not romanticize this world at all. She shows exactly what callous evil beings vampires truly would be if they DID exist.
I also grew tired of Ms. Brite's extreme over-use of the word, "spider". As a noun, an adjective and even a verb! Either that's talent or that's over-kill. To her credit, there were many passages that were almost poetic, they were written so well.
I'm sure if this had been around and I had read it when I was into my whole "deathie" phase 18 yrs ago, that this would have been a much better read for me.
I did finish the story and was sad to say good-bye to the character of Ghost. I would love to see a story dedicated to him. I think that would be really interesting.
I would only recommend this book to readers who only wear black on the outside and/or the inside.For those who love vamp stories, but want lighter fare, try the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris. Fun to read and humorous with a great heroine, Sookie Stackhouse!
Rating: 
Summary: I expected more.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A great Erotic Vampire Novel
Review: Lost souls is a great book for all of you who love to read vampire erotica. Poppy's most known characters are in this book; Steve & Ghost. Steve and Ghost make up the band Lost Souls? They live in Missing Mile North Carolina. Everything is going great until a boy named Nothing shows up with his Vampire friends, then all hell breaks loose.
Rating: 
Summary: Lush, Hip and Sexy
Review: This is one of my favorite vampire stories, although it's not for the prudish. EXCELLENT prose. Antiformulaic, with no castle, no faultless ingenues... just beautiful [androgynous] boys, lost girls, Southern charm and supernatural entities that will both scare and intrigue you. Lots of interesting male/male relationships, sexual and otherwise. Definitely a worthwhile read.
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