Reviews with content warning for Torture - Camp Damascus

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

83 reviews

qteabeans's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

A read for the queer who needs the reminder that there is nothing wrong with being queer. This book is in that sweet space where it is a horror novel but it is mostly about self-love and acceptance. Can you make repairs for past harms you've done? Can you find connection with those you love? You can. All you have to do is literally fight demons.

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minervacerridwen's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

2.5

Even though I wanted to like the queer autistic main character, something about the writing made it very hard to connect with this book. It's written in first person and throws in cliché sentences in odd places, making me wonder if this was done on purpose or simply escaped an extra round of editing. The pacing of the story left me with the same question. In the first half it was interesting to see the evolution in the main character from someone extremely faithful to her religion and everything she'd learned, into a critical thinker who is trying to find her place away from the cult, but there was a large chunk after that where I lost interest. The story picked up right at the end and there were some cool concepts, but overall the distance from the main character and the general feel made it so Camp Damascus wasn't the right book for me.

Something that bothered me was that while Rose explicitly considered that these "demons" were creatures from a different universe, she never had a moment's compassion for them. Only at the end did it turn out that they only attacked queer people because they were made to, and that they'd much rather torture the oppressors instead. It felt like a dissonant that she realised they might also "just be animals" but that she didn't even try reasoning with them before finding ways to kill them, at a point where I don't think she'd had the vision of them torturing people in hell (?) yet. But then she still allows them to be on the loose at the end. I think it would have been in character for her to give the question of "what if someone or something is used for evil and needs to be stopped for that evil to stop, while at the same time it's also just some creature" more thought. Especially within the context of people being tortured just for being different.

For a long time I wondered whether the Peter Pan reference right at the beginning would become important, and while it was small, I was very glad to see the image of Rose's shadow engulfing the city at the very end. That was a nice touch.

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bites_of_books's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is Chuck Tingle's first adult horror novel and I am very pleasantly surprised! We follow Rose Darling, a young woman who is starting to notice that things in her very religious town aren't all that they seem but also that not everything she thought about herself aligns with said community. Her town is known for housing a 100% success conversion camp for queer youth and she hasn't thought twice about this until she starts feeling a certain way about another young woman in her school. Her therapist and parents are incredibly supportive so she's pretty sure she'll be able to figure things out, except her own curiosity is starting to peel back at the given truths around her until she finds.... way more than she expected to find...

A true horror book that starts a bit slow but escalates to an ending that was deeply satisfying. I did almost wish for it to be multi-POV so that I could see things from the other character's perspectives as well, I'm super curious about their lives!

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