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A review by mxsallybend
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
5.0
If you’re already a Chuck Tingle fan, then feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph of my review. If you’re new to him, however, curious about his ‘mainstream’ debut, then know 3 things about this:
1. Don’t be fooled by the blurb – this is not about kids at a gay conversion camp, but kids who remember it.
2. Don’t let the religious heaviness of the first chapter turn you off – it’s there for a reason, and it gets better.
3. Don’t let Tingle’s reputation for weird erotica keep you away – this is entirely accessible.
As a fan of the Tingleverse, even I was a bit hesitant in reading the opening pages of Camp Damascus, wondering just what I’d gotten myself into, but there was something immediately endearing about Rose, our narrator and protagonist. She’s smart, self-aware, and I immediately identified her as a queer neurodivergent soul with whom I could connect. Midway through the chapter we get a glimpse of a creepy-looking woman in the woods, bizarrely dressed in a department store polo shirt, whom only Rose seems to see, and I started to get curious. And then we get to the end of the chapter and (minor spoiler) OMG the flies! I had to know what in the literal hell was going on. I was hooked . . . and I never looked back.
I could tell you this is a book about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about the dangers of faith and the power of love, but I’m sure you can find plenty of other reviews picking apart the themes and underlying messages. They’re there, and they’re wonderful, and if you’re the kind of person drawn to Rose’s story, I suspect you’ll agree with most (if not all) of them, but I want to talk about the story itself.
Camp Damascus is a horror story that, for me, has all the hooks of King or (early) Koontz, the self-aware supernatural humor of Ghostbusters, and the heart of the Buffyverse. It engaged me on a deeply emotional level, making me care about the characters and what happens to them. Tingle plays with many of the familiar horror tropes and conventions, with some science fiction mixed in, and yet nothing about the story is predictable. I don’t find religious themes the least bit interesting, and have never found movies like The Exorcist or The Omen to be even remotely scary, but the way the horror is structured here just absolutely worked for me. It made sense to me, it passed my willing-suspension-of-disbelief, and it genuinely chilled me.
I found myself delighted by every twist and turn, every single “No, don’t go in there!” moment. Even when I was furious with the ‘good‘ God-fearing people of Neverton, Montana, I was smiling along with where the story was leading us. Yes, this is a supernatural tale, but it’s less about Biblical evil and more about human hatred. Okay, so that’s a theme, and I didn’t want to dwell on them, but dammit, it’s important.
So far, 2023 has been a good year for books – I’ve had a few bitter disappointments and a handful of other 5-star reads – but I doubt anything will stick with me like Camp Damascus did. This was exactly what I wanted, and even more what I needed. If there’s such a thing as feel-good horror, this is it.
https://sallybend.wordpress.com/2023/07/19/book-review-camp-damascus-by-chuck-tingle-horror-lgbtq/
1. Don’t be fooled by the blurb – this is not about kids at a gay conversion camp, but kids who remember it.
2. Don’t let the religious heaviness of the first chapter turn you off – it’s there for a reason, and it gets better.
3. Don’t let Tingle’s reputation for weird erotica keep you away – this is entirely accessible.
As a fan of the Tingleverse, even I was a bit hesitant in reading the opening pages of Camp Damascus, wondering just what I’d gotten myself into, but there was something immediately endearing about Rose, our narrator and protagonist. She’s smart, self-aware, and I immediately identified her as a queer neurodivergent soul with whom I could connect. Midway through the chapter we get a glimpse of a creepy-looking woman in the woods, bizarrely dressed in a department store polo shirt, whom only Rose seems to see, and I started to get curious. And then we get to the end of the chapter and (minor spoiler) OMG the flies! I had to know what in the literal hell was going on. I was hooked . . . and I never looked back.
I could tell you this is a book about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about the dangers of faith and the power of love, but I’m sure you can find plenty of other reviews picking apart the themes and underlying messages. They’re there, and they’re wonderful, and if you’re the kind of person drawn to Rose’s story, I suspect you’ll agree with most (if not all) of them, but I want to talk about the story itself.
Camp Damascus is a horror story that, for me, has all the hooks of King or (early) Koontz, the self-aware supernatural humor of Ghostbusters, and the heart of the Buffyverse. It engaged me on a deeply emotional level, making me care about the characters and what happens to them. Tingle plays with many of the familiar horror tropes and conventions, with some science fiction mixed in, and yet nothing about the story is predictable. I don’t find religious themes the least bit interesting, and have never found movies like The Exorcist or The Omen to be even remotely scary, but the way the horror is structured here just absolutely worked for me. It made sense to me, it passed my willing-suspension-of-disbelief, and it genuinely chilled me.
I found myself delighted by every twist and turn, every single “No, don’t go in there!” moment. Even when I was furious with the ‘good‘ God-fearing people of Neverton, Montana, I was smiling along with where the story was leading us. Yes, this is a supernatural tale, but it’s less about Biblical evil and more about human hatred. Okay, so that’s a theme, and I didn’t want to dwell on them, but dammit, it’s important.
So far, 2023 has been a good year for books – I’ve had a few bitter disappointments and a handful of other 5-star reads – but I doubt anything will stick with me like Camp Damascus did. This was exactly what I wanted, and even more what I needed. If there’s such a thing as feel-good horror, this is it.
https://sallybend.wordpress.com/2023/07/19/book-review-camp-damascus-by-chuck-tingle-horror-lgbtq/