A review by shirp
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

2.0

It says a lot in my faith in Palahniuk's current direction that I only borrowed this one from the library. The premise had seemed interesting, but Damned feels incomplete, the characters are superficial and non-engaging, and his big "reveal" is just plain dumb. That said, the writing was good enough to keep reading and there were some good passages. I can't quite decide if Palahniuk has made a conscious decision to only come out with culty camp fiction from now on or what...but Damned just feels so repetitive, lacking consistency and a clear narrative, placing a lot of focus on a plot theme to barely address it and discard it later, and ultimately just tries too hard. All shock (or not, if you've become accustomed to Palahniuk) and no value.