A review by maxgardner
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

This had a really rocky start for me and for the first 1/3 of the book, I wasn't sure I wanted to continue. There were interesting ideas and solid moments of creepiness with the demons getting introduced and the insane party scene, but the characters all seemed uncannily non-human, behaving and talking abnormally (and we hadn't even gotten to know them yet, so that made it harder as I wasn't sure if Tingle was just unintentionally writing these characters poorly). It felt sort of like the start of season 5 of Buffy—I had the sense I had missed something significant, but when I double checked, I hadn't, which was only more baffling. But similar to Buffy, you realize soon enough that this was all intentional and things very much are off in this town. Once I got past that and we get to the meat of the story, I really got into it. In spite of Tingle having some clunky sentence structures and odd metaphors and adjectives throughout, I found the story was enough to drive me through to the end. The side characters are loveable, the demons are genuinely terrifying, and the finale is epic (how can it not be when Tingle combines heavy metal with demons and a conversion camp?!). Highly entertaining and a pretty quick read as well.