Book Review: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

camp damascus chuck tingle

A Chilling Emotional Journey

In Camp Damascus, author Chuck Tingle tackles the horrors of conversion camps. I strongly suspect that Tingle has personal experience with places like this, although that’s impossible to verify, since nobody knows who he is.

The Kingdom of the Pine is a hardcore conservative Christian sect residing in rural Montana. Pastor Bend, a leading figure in the church, runs the notorious Camp Damascus, a gay conversion camp that claims a 100% success rate in “curing” people of their homosexual attractions. How does the camp do this? It’s a mystery.

The protagonist and POV narrator is Rose Darling, a 20 year old who has the emotional maturity of someone several years younger. She and her parents are fervent members of the church, which teaches that being gay is a mortal sin which will doom you to the eternal hellfire of damnation.

Rose had a sheltered childhood. It’s obvious early on that she’s gay, but her repressed feelings confuse and frighten her. Rose develops a nasty habit of vomiting up insects (as shown on the cover)!

After running away from home, Rose encounters and befriends Saul, a death metal-loving, fervently spiritual gay man who also has repressed memories of the camp.

Rose meets a beautiful and mysterious young woman, Willow, who somehow knows her. Fascinated by the alluring Willow, and determined to help her new friends, Rose peels back the mystery of her lost past and discovers the grotesque truth about Camp Damascus.

I thought Camp Damascus was going to be a straightforward tale about a girl who gets caught engaging in a gay relationship and is forced by her parents to attend the camp. But Chuck Tingle has something different in store for us. The narrative is set *after* Rose was at the camp, although she has no memory of this at first.

As glimmers of memory return, Rose begins to remember the deep love she and Willow once shared. The trio decide to infiltrate the camp to discover its secrets, leading to a climactic final confrontation.

Rose is clearly neurodivergent, and Tingle does a great job integrating this attribute into her narrative style. Her condition(s) are not specified. The church-sponsored “therapist” that her parents send her to is a joke, so she is undiagnosed and untreated.

She displays elements of ADHD, autism, and OCD. Her brain’s incessant need to imagine potential scenarios, and strategize what to do in each situation, is something I can identify with myself!

She’s also in the habit of bringing note cards with her to social events in order to have questions and discussion topics ready for any potential conversation. I don’t do this, but it sounds like a great idea!

Battling literal and figurative demons

Along with the emotional demons that Rose, Saul, and Willow are dealing with, Camp Damascus also features the supernatural variety. Tingle does a nice job creating a unique version of these common horror genre monsters.

You see, these demons are professionals. They wear nice polo shirts and name tags. And why not? They’re here to help people avoid eternal damnation, right?

The demons have shackles around their necks. This begs the question: are they genuinely allied with the church, or are they captives themselves?

I enjoy Tingle’s writing style. This is the second book of his I’ve read. The other is Bury Your Gays, which is a sharp Hollywood satire about how LGBT folks (and other minorities) are portrayed by film and TV studios. I didn’t review it on here, but I definitely recommend it.

Tingle excels at writing creative and colorful descriptions. His prose has a cinematic quality. Indeed, I’d be interested in watching a film adaption of Camp Damascus and/or Bury Your Gays. He has a third book coming out soon.

An Almost Masterpiece

For the first 200 pages of Camp Damascus, I was struggling to find any fault with it. The pacing could be a bit better, but that’s being nitpicky. That said, the ending has some issues. Not enough to ruin the book – not even close – but significant enough to warrant mention.

The final confrontation feels rushed. Tingle uses a deus ex machina in a key moment when his protagonists are in great danger. This is perhaps permissible in a story like this, but it still feels sloppy. Also, the half-baked explanation about the true nature of the church’s demons didn’t satisfy me.