Lost Souls

If you love Anne Rice, you’ll love this!

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite is one of those modern haunting and unforgettable vampire tales with haunting and unforgettable tragic characters that stay with you long after you’ve finished reading the book.

Poppy Z. Brite has become a cult writer among aficionados of the vampire genre. Two of her main characters, Ghost and Steve, were actually taken from her short stories, while others are featured in another novel, Drawing Blood, which, however, is not a sequel to Lost Souls.  Lost Souls is actually an expanded version of her short story ‘The Seed of Lost Souls’.

Lost Souls opens in New Orleans, a favourite setting among vampire story authors (see Fevre Dream and Anne Rice’s novels, among others). Three nomadic vampires arrive at Christian’s Bar where one of them, Zillah, impregnates a teenage girl. What follows is the story of their son, Nothing, who is adopted by ‘normal’ parents, and his search for a family and a sense of belonging.

Lost Souls? is the name of a band located in the typical American place in the middle of nowhere, Missing Mile. The members of the band are the tormented, messed up rocker Steve and his best friend Ghost, a seer and witch’s grandson, whose music lures Nothing to the small town. The story is about the adolescent search for identity and the existentialist and nihilist theme of the book is implied in the names of the characters, Nothing and Ghost. Youth are the children of the night, whether they are human or vampire, mortal or ancient.

In many ways, therefore, Brite’s novel is a song of Innocence and Experience, of Innocence lost as Nothing finds his family of vampires and is drawn into an incestuous relationship with his cruel and selfish father, Zillah. It is a compelling read that will have you turning pages and falling in love with the characters, with its sense of decadence and magic, savagery and poetry.

Main Characters 

(in order of appearance)

Jessy: Nothing’s teenage mother who dies giving birth to him (it’s gorier than it sounds)

Christian: the New Orleans barman who is also a very lonely vampire, hundreds of years old

Zillah: Cruel, narcissistic vampire, leader of the gang, father of Nothing and later his lover

Molochai: One of Zillah’s followers

Twig: the second of Zillah’s followers

Nothing: the protagonist of the story, in search of family and identity. He eats his friend.

Steve: musician, human, totally messed up, in love with Ann but has a funny way of manifesting his feelings for her

Ghost: a seer, witch’s grandson, totally weird but utterly lovable and wise. He can read people’s feelings

Ann: another messed up character, in love with Steve, hopping from one guy to another in search of love and finally gets her happy ending (Not!)

Wallace Creech: Jessy’s dad and Nothing’s granddad, a crusader against evil and vampires who manages to poison everyone with his cancerous blood

Title: Lost Souls

Author: Poppy Z. Brite

Published: 1993

Rating: 18+

Author's website: www.poppyzbrite.com