Despite being the very first traditionally published Chuck Tingle novel, it’s the last one I’ve read! I read Bury Your Gays and Lucky Day earlier this year, so I’m finishing the backlist with Camp Damascus. Queer horror is one of my favourite genres, and I’m always excited to read more of it.
The book follows Rose Darling, who is about to graduate high school in her religious hometown of Neverton, Montana. She is a dutiful and devout daughter and does her best to follow the Four Tenets of the Kingdom of the Pines (the religious cult she lives in), but for some reason, she only wants to be around her friend Martina instead of Isaiah, the boy her family is trying to set her up with. When she starts seeing strange visions of demons and begins to dig into why the local gay conversion camp with a supposed 100% success rate has to hire actors for its ads, her whole life gets turned upside down.
I felt the book was much stronger in the first half than in the second, which is where it began to lose me. There isn’t much of a plot summary or blurb on the inside cover to get details from, so I was under the impression that most of the book would be taking place at a conversion camp, especially since the title of the book is the name of the camp. I spent a lot of the book expecting to see things that didn’t come to pass because of this. The horror parts were good and scary as they should be. I always get a twisted thrill every time somebody is brutally killed on-page, and I kind of wish there had been even more of that!
In terms of characters, same as with the plot, Camp Damascus started out strong but fell off for me as it went on. I wanted to know more about Isaiah and Martina and the things going on in Neverton, instead we go off in a different direction with characters I wasn’t as invested in. Fortunately, despite being uninterested in the side characters, Rose carried the story for me. She is autistic, and you can tell that a lot of care and love was put into her characterization, since the author is also autistic. In a book about what happens when parts of yourself get buried, I’m glad this part of her character wasn’t hidden from herself or the reader.
Of the three Chuck Tingle books I’ve read, this has been my least favourite mostly because I wasn’t very compelled by the plot, and I enjoyed Bury Your Gays and Lucky Day more. However, just because it was my least favourite of the three doesn’t mean I didn’t like it! Rose was a fun character to read, and I was glad to get to know her story. If you are a fan of queer horror, like me, Camp Damascus is for you.
Trigger warnings: homophobia, religious bigotry, body horror
Also check out Danika’s review of Camp Damascus!
