A review by thomasgammon
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I enjoyed how the novel immersed and surrounded you in the  90's alt scene and I enjoyed the book most when it was this dark, edgy hitchhiking story about a very lost boy at the lost characters he ran into. Unfortunately the story reached its emotional and thematic conclusions around half way through and it felt like it then just stagnated there. For a book that's more sensory, meditative and introspective, when there is almost no plot apart repeated scenes that would be described with the more unsavoury  content warnings, finding your emotional and character conclusions very early on leaves very little to draw you through the rest of the novel. That being said, the composition of the novel itself seems to speak to a bleak cynicism, self-certainty and sense of defeated inevitability felt by those in the novel and people that engaged in the emo/alt-scene and is incredibly effective at capture the atmosphere of that time.