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Just like many years ago when I read it . Beautiful timeless will reread again and again.
A good old haunted house story is something I've always loved, so when the narrator of this tale offered me a chance to listen to the audio in exchange for a review, I jumped at it. Poppy Z. Brite is an author I've heard a lot about and I've been wanting to read his work for quite some time. I learned a few things while reading this book and one of them is that Poppy Z. Brite can write.Trevor is a young man returning to the house where his mother and brother were killed 20 years ago. Shortly aft...
I came across this title while Googling “gay horror books.” It’s definitely very gay but it’s actually pretty light on the horror until about two thirds of the way into the book. This was originally published in the early 90s. So it was cool to see a queer story that was written and published in that time period, but it also meant there were definitely some dated aspects. The story follows Trevor, whose father killed his mother and younger brother in their house in North Carolina before committi...
This is a book I read to tatters as a teenager and yet haven’t touched in years as an adult.Well, that changed this weekend.Re-reading a favorite book for me is so much like slipping into a comfortable dream. I know these pages so well, the words cradle me, the paragraphs are like a lullaby and at the same time they can be like a knife.I know how it all ends.That can be a good or bad end depending on the book.Missing Mile, North Carolina is but a blip on the map. Perfect for the McGee family to
Back when Anne Rice was all the rage, dozens of authors jumped on the brooding, melodramatic historical vampire quickly turning what Rice wrote into a literary cliché. The shelves were littered with Rice wanna-be’s. Then along came Poppy Z. Brite, a short story writer who was making the horror world sit up and take notice by blending very realistic, human characters with an almost splatter-punk kind of sensibility. To boot, Brite was doing what many authors had never even contemplated. She was m...
I GOT MY HANDS ON THE AUDIO!!!! Review soooon.
Talk about your guilty pleasures, eh?I'm always torn about Poppy Z Brite's books. On one hand, lots of hot sex scenes between pretty boys, lashings of the supernatural, and comic books.On the other, her female characters are all mothers/bitches/vaginas/die horribly delete as applicable. It makes me conflicted. The things I really love, along with pet peeves.This is the only one of her books I would actually recommend- one of the female characters actually lives, and I don't want to actively slap...
My favorite Brite novel, and the one with the best characterization. A young man returns to the home where his father went homicidally insane years ago. While there, he meets and falls in love with a hacker on the run. Is their love enough to combat the sinister madness of the house?
What must be stated first is this novel isn’t strictly “horror” — at least not to the extent the synopsis promises. Don’t go into this expecting gore to splatter the page from the jump. Drawing Blood is a character study of the best sort; the characters and their situations (and traumas) are developed slowly, carefully, until things come to a head. This is my favorite sort of horror. What the best Abyss Horror paperbacks dealt in was experimental storylines, offbeat characters, unique and pervas...
LOVED this novel. Erotic and terrifying. Hot sexy times as well.
Please ignore the cheesy title and crappy back cover descriptions. This is less a horror novel than a love/adventure story — in fact, I would say that the "horror" elements are the weakest part of the story (thank goodness they're only really heavy in one chapter towards the end). Brite's lush descriptive prose is enticing (an outdoor market in New Orleans is bursting with such fantastic color and scent it makes the mouth water) and she's created some fantastic characters, most notably in Trevor...
4.5 stars. A great book, phenomenal writing, satisfying story.
Drawing Blood is a beautiful love story woven in that dark vein where gothic horror, MM erotica, and psychedelia flow together. This is my second book I’ve read from Poppy Z Brite, the first one being Lost Souls. I would recommend reading Lost Souls first, since there are a few easter eggs and references in Drawing Blood to its predecessor. Not enough that will confuse you, but enough to make you feel real smug about having read Lost Souls (plus, it’s got vampires!)So what did I like about Drawi...
Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood (Dell, 1993)I've been a fan of Poppy Brite's novels ever since I read Exquisite Corpse back in 1997, but (and here I lose most of my cred with my goth friends), I've never been a fan of Steve and Ghost. It's a testament to Brite's characterization ability that my problem with them is a simple personality clash; they just never clicked with me. Because of it, however, I never did read Drawing Blood, a Missing Mile novel that, as it turns out, contains Steve and Ghost...
This was, I think, my first queer romance. I read it years ago, found in an old library, back when that was still a thing I did. And it blew my mind. I became obsessed with it. Two beautiful, damaged boys fall in love and have sex in a metaphysical ghost story?? Absolute insanity. I was probably reading it while listening to that My Chemical Romance album. Anyway, my adult brain has some reservations. It’s trying so hard to be Southern gothic, there are too many unnecessary characters, it gets v...
I remember this being like a weird fever dream. The further into the story I went, the less sense it made, but I didn't care. By that point I was into the ride.This is probably my favorite book by Brite...but they're all a love/hate mix.
3.5 stars out of 5, rounding down.The first chapter/prologue of this one immediately hooked me. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and the story kickstarts very quickly. Unfortunately, I thought the book slowed down quite a bit in the middle, as we got to know our characters. Brite loves to over explain pretty much everything, from a character's background to what a convenience store looks like (I'm not kidding). These gratuitous explanations were very easy to read through, so overall the book
I'm not sure I would classify this novel as horror. I guess there is that entire possible, maybe astral projection episode in the end, but again, maybe it was just a drug fueled mind trip. Regardless, this was a powerful story about two really F'ed up characters who found each other and made each other just a little better.
Interesting and different...from what I heard about Poppy Z Brite before I first expected a book full of sex and gore (don't get me wrong, both are in here too!). Instead, this was more of a existential (and pretty dark) coming of age and love story dressed in an supernatural outfit. Reminded me of earlier Richard Linklater movies where characters even just hang out for some time (Brite captures the culture of the early 90s quite well, including the music) but co-written by Clive Barker and infl...