I started out with promise, but quickly fell apart. There are some good things in between, but after reading all the way through, the end is rather disappointing. ( )

Son los hijos de la noche. Visten de negro, van a la deriva sin ningún ancla y buscan amor, ser aceptados y dar sentido a sus vidas...

A hardcore [b:Twilight|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361039443l/41865._SY75_.jpg|3212258]. Would appeal to the dark eyeliner 13-year old, but I don’t appreciate YA lit. of any ilk. Brite, er I mean, Martin loses no opportunity in having her/his/their characters stop what they’re doing and drop the plot to get it on with anything alive or dead. If anyone thinks this is a fine depiction of gay or hetero sex, well you must be thinkin’ rape and incest are the bees knees. ( )

Twenty-five years after my first reading, I decided to dive back into this one again. I remember little about the first read other than not being that impressed and not knowing what to think about all that "gay stuff" that I read.

All this time later, I like to think I'm more mature and understanding with the "gay stuff"...and no, I don't call it that anymore. And this time around, I was impressed with what I read.

For the sake of clarity, though I know Poppy Z. Brite, female at the time of the release of this novel, is now Billy Martin and prefers masculine tags, I'm going to stick with "she" for the review, as it does refer to Martin 25 years earlier.

To be clear, the novel is not without its faults, but, if what I've read is true and this story was written when Brite was just 19, then it's almost impossible for it not to have some awkward moments.

It is, of course, much less shocking that it would have been upon its release, but I still applaud Brite for taking it in some of the directions she did. I can't think of another novel that so perfectly captures the vacuous emptiness of the Eighties and the directionless morbidity of America's youth at the time. Tying in the music of Bowie, Bauhaus, and the Cure, and the poetry of Dylan Thomas, it helped set the mood and the tone for the story.

As others have mentioned, there's little plot, at times feeling like an Eighties vampiric version of Kerouac's On The Road. But if I had to compare it to any other works, I'd say it's a mashup of the New Orleans atmosphere of Anne Rice, without all the boring shit (which is most of Anne Rice), the carnal sensuality of Clive Barker, the casual violence of John Skipp and Craig Spector, and the confused, nihilistic youth of S.E. Hinton. That's quite a punch.

Could the story have been laid out a bit better? Yes. But overall, the word choice, the ideas, the examination of youth...all of it...gorgeous. The movie The Lost Boys only wishes it had this much depth and soul.

Well done. ( )

It has been a long time since I read this novel, but I recall being quite amazed by the absorbing moodiness, evocative prose, and compelling themes. My impression of Brite's writing is that she is everything that Anne Rice fans think of Rice -- but where Rice falls short of the legend, Brite exceeds all expectations.

Some of Brite's preoccupations in her writing (which somewhat mirror Rice's, but Brite is less coy about it) get to be a bit much for my tastes after a couple of books (it began to feel like reading the same book), and as such I stopped reading her works some years ago, but there's no denying that as an author she has an impressive talent and formidable skill in her craft.

You might notice this review is almost identical to my review of Drawing Blood. Yeah, I know. I read them both at the same time, and my memory of each has faded about the same amount. ( )