Chuck Tingle is sometimes written off as a joke, but this book should prove to anyone hesitant to pick up his jokier backlist titles that he has serious writing chops. This novel was creepy, gross, tense, heartbreaking, and very funny. It also made me feel incredibly hopeful and joyful. In the same way Tingle gets written off, horror can be written off as only for shock value or without merit, but horror like this is a way to confront very real fears at their scariest and envision a way through. To me, the horror of this book wasn't just the conversion camp as much as the absolute dedication the (evil) church members showed.

The book follows Rose, a high school senior who starts experiencing strange physical symptoms and confusing memories, and explores their connection to the shadowy Camp Damascus, a conversion therapy camp in her town. Rose is uniquely focused and logical, which makes her a really excellent and believable narrator as she works through the steps of solving a mystery and making a plan to take down the camp. I really enjoyed when her trio came together—Rose carried the beginning of the book in a pretty self-contained way, but the addition of Saul and Willow was great.

There was a lot to love in this book, but I especially appreciated the portrayal of Rose's parents. They clearly love her and want her to be happy, and they just as clearly have a pretty narrow and horrifying idea of what that looks like and how it can be achieved. Her mother helps her escape, but it's not a touching farewell, it's imbued with resentment and anger, which doesn't undercut the earlier scenes, it throws them into heartbreaking relief.

The end was pretty hopeful for a horror. The body count in this is low, but the body horror, gore, and overall creepiness make it solidly horror. But the final scene was incredibly satisfying not just in providing the justice Rose was looking for, but to show the campers rising up and following her lead. And for a horror novel about a conversion camp to end with a perfect (lesbian) kiss as an expression of that hope was, to me, perfection.

I honestly did not want to put this read down! Chuck Tingle's debut in traditional publishing was an emotionally terrifying HIT. Camp Damascus tells the story of 20-year-old Rose, who discovers not only the demonic secrets hidden within her small, God-fearing town but also the power within herself. This was more than a horror novel but a story of truth seen from varying perspectives. Tingle was able to give the reader an insight into each character's way of thinking if only briefly enough to expose the truth of the town a bit more.

I loved how Chuck Tingle was able to articulate the feelings that encompass deconstructing your faith while also giving us demons used as weapons by those in that faith. Rose meets people from her past, only feeling the ache that she once knew these souls but cannot piece the memories together of how they know each other exactly. As she draws back the curtain of her subconscious, she finds that the very sins the church wanted to eradicate are her biggest strengths.

Camp Damascus gives us queer folks who deconstructed our religion hope and proves that every bit of curiosity held within humans is meant to fuel us into progress and truth.

I have read a couple tinglers in my day, so I was eager for this horror debut. It's very good. I really appreciate horror that explores religious trauma in a way that feels so authentic. This was one of those books that's better in the first half while the dread is creeping and there aren't answers, but the back half is still satisfying. I also LOVE the narrator's potent use of the word frick. It's a lovingly crafted book that also has some genuinely scary and unsettling parts.

CAMP DAMASCUS is absolutely engrossing, non-stop Suspenseful, maximally Scary [human evil and Otherworldly] and solidly grounded in Love. Actually, Love is the entire point: a particular sect in Montana, founded by one individual in the 19th century, named "Kingdom of the Pine," is both fundamentalist and evangelical, but neither in quite the ordinary Christian sense or practice. Reminiscent of a certain denomination, this congregation follows the "Four Tenets" promulgated by the 19th century "Prophet." Kingdom of the Pine is located in Neverton, Montana, a small, very God-fearing community, and isolated in the forest is located their world-renowned "gay-conversion" program, Camp Damascus 🏕, with its "100% success rate" [and millions in income from distraught families]. The slogan of Camp Damascus is: "Love Right." There is a 100% success rate, but it's not due to the LGBTQ+ adolescents sent there suddenly "converting." In play is a particular system which is so wildly imaginative [and unfortunately effectual] I was amazed (and ready to reread as soon as I finished, because this novel is just that brilliant!).

Kudos for a STRONG autistic, neurodivergent, female young adult [age 20] Protagonist! Additionally are two highly supportive young adult characters, and a cast of parents, pastors, counselors, therapist, who are....let's just say, perfect foils for the 3 Queer MC's!

Chuck Tingle is a name that I had heard for a while now. Back a few years ago I took a look at his catalogue and thought, “Wow! I don’t think that this stuff is for me.” There is only so much butt stuff I can handle and when butts are getting pounded by their own butt, that is just too much butt for me. It is pretty evident that Chuck Tingle has a political leaning (please see Domald Tromp series), and I have a pretty good inkling of which way Tingle leans; and I can respect that. So, when an author is still going strong with hundreds of books under his belt (probably somewhere near his butt) and has a horror release, you know I’m going to read it.

Camp Damascus was a well-developed story with some interesting characters. The synopsis was brief, but intriguing, it really gives nothing away. It did fall out the way I expected but the unexpected is good. I was pulled into Rose’s story and enjoyed the ride.

Personally, what pushed this story over the top was how it made me feel, and let’s be honest, art is supposed to make you feel. CAMP DAMASCUS MADE ME MAD! I am sick and tired of these holier than thou far right religious freaks calling everyone out as demons of Satan. Using the words of Jesus to justify, by any means possible, violence toward those that don’t agree with them. Quoting the Old Testament as justification for taking an eye for and eye. These bible thumpers go on and on with, “man shall not lie with man as he doth with woman” as they eat a pulled pork sandwich with extra bacon. If the Old Testament is gospel, follow it, and leave the bacon for me! For me, Jesus was about two things: love and acceptance. You do you, I’ll do me, and no one needs to hurt anyone else over it.

So, yeah, Chuck Tingle and Camp Damascus made me feel all of this. Sorry if I went too far, but Camp Damascus kicks butt!

*5 Stars

First and foremost, a huge thank you to Netgalley and Tor Books for sending me an ARC of Camp Damascus. All opinions are my own.

*Please check the trigger warnings before reading, this novel discusses heavy topics surrounding religious trauma and the horrors of conversion camps.*

Camp Damascus is a horror novel following Rose; a devoutly Christian young woman about to graduate high school, living in Neverton, Montana; a town famous for a gay conversion camp with a "100% Effectiveness Rate". As the school year is coming to an end, her parents are encouraging her to date even though she has never had an interest in a boyfriend, but she starts noticing strange feelings for her friend Martina.

Even stranger, Rose starts to see a creepy woman hanging around, and Rose may or may not have vomited up live Mayflies at dinner with her family one night. Soon, she begins to see cracks in the faith and church she has planned and based her life around. The more curious Rose becomes, the more she starts to uncover and remember...

This book was so much different than what I had expected! Camp Damascus is full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat nearly the entire time I was reading it. Some of the descriptions of gore and creatures had my skin crawling, with chills going down my spine.

I was a bit bummed with how fast the ending was wrapped up, I was hoping for a bit more. There were also some pacing issues, but overall, this is a solid book, and I'll definitely read more horror novels from this author in the future!

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for sharing this ARC with me!

I've followed Tingle for several years and love his web presence and cultural impact; he seems like an excellent person, and I'm thrilled he's delving into horror. His style of lulling you into a sense of normalcy tinged with unease before slapping you with The Horrors was delightful, and I'm excited to read his other horror work (just one other novella that I know of, so far) as well as some of his romance/erotica in the near future. Highly recommend picking this up, even if it's your first foray into the Tingleverse!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
I’ve long been a follower of Chuck Tingle’s, as while I’m not a huge fan of niche erotica, I love his unapologetic approach to the genre (and life) with the main goal of proving love is real. And while Camp Damascus is not the first long-form work he’s produced (Harriet Porber and Straight both sound awesome!), it is the first work of his I’ve had the pleasure of reading. And even in the realm of horror, he finds a roundabout way of fulfilling his mission to prove love as he captures a darkly satirical and relevant portrayal of a conversion therapy and the other ways in which the queer community have long been targeted by fundamentalist evangelical Christians.
Rose makes for a hyper-realistic portrayal of a queer and autistic (this is revealed at a later point in the text) young person who was raised within evangelical Christian circles, growing in her awareness of her queerness and simultaneously discovering her church’s more sinister undertones. She’s very easy to root for, and I loved following her as her disillusionment with her environment grew, and grew into an even more pervasive discomfort, before coming to a head.
The story takes its time at first to set the scene, but it soon ramps up. The sense of danger is real, and I respect how Tingle was able to keep his story grounded in the stark realities of the issues he was discussing, even while incorporating these supernatural elements.
This was a delightfully gritty mainstream debut from Chuck Tingle, and I’m now curious to check out some of his other work, particularly his other longer works. I’d recommend this to readers looking for satirical horror, but I’d especially recommend it to someone who has been interested in Chuck Tingle based on his Internet persona, but who has yet to try one of his books. You won’t be disappointed.

Neverton, Montana is a God-fearing community near Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Their success is anything but holy, however.

Opening the novel from Rose's point of view, we see the extreme conservatism of the Kingdom of the Pines, the tight-knit religious community whose leaders run the conversion camp. Strange things happen to her from the start of the novel, from seeing an old woman in uniform to coughing up a mass of flies. Her wishes and perceptions are ignored from the start, and she is expected to fall in line with what others want for her. Of course, she can't; we wouldn't have a novel if she did. The strange occurrences and misperception continues, with flashes of memory that she doesn't completely recognize; once she realizes what it means, her analytical mind turns to understanding what happened to her, and then to saving others caught in the same trap. She moves quickly to do so, even at risk to herself.

Chuck Tingle is an internet icon for the many books he's written, and this is his first foray into horror and traditional publishing circles. From his own biography, "Chuck writes to prove love is real because love is the most important tool we have when resisting the endless cosmic void." Rose begins as a God-fearing girl with autistic quirks and special interests her parents want her to stop doing, and they quickly condemn her when she doesn't fall into line with what they want. But as she realizes over the course of the book, love isn't a horrible thing, no matter what form it takes. It's the hatred that leads to torture, isolation, and betrayals that is evil. Hypocrisy couched as faith is a terrible thing, and it's only by revealing the truth that the children at Camp Damascus can be free.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

Did not finish this one, mainly due to the pacing and the characters, I couldnt get invested in it.

IT'S SO GOOD OMG READ IT!! So, for everyone who has been listening to me talk up Camp Damascus for the last several months, now is the time to get your hands on this amazing book. Written by the always excellent Chuck Tingle, the infamously humorous romance writer digs into horror in a book about a gay conversion camp that employs literal demons to "scare kids straight". Rose loves her family and she loves God, but she also knows she isn't interested in dating men and has begun to notice just how beautiful her female friend is. When she begins coughing up flies and her friend is brutally murdered, Rose knows something is wrong, no matter what her parents and Church-appointed therapist say. She begins to investigate, and discovers the horrors behind her community. Rose is possibly the best-written autistic person I've ever read- curious and logical, with a different way of seeing the world and an inability to lie to herself. Rather than a disability, she is just different, in a way her parents claim to tolerate but more often try to push down. Rose's relationship with her parents is beautiful and heartbreaking because of its reality - they do love her, but are willing to hurt her in horrific ways because she isn't exactly who they want her to be. Many books about queer kids dealing with familial rejection make those parents cartoonishly evil, while Tingle draws then as lovingly cruel. Rose's fight and triumph will likely speak to lots of queer readers, and the hope she brings is beautiful. Must read isn't a strong enough descriptor, in my view - check it out or risk missing out on a work of Earth-shattering importance that also happens to be intriguing and entertaining.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for allowing me to read an ARC of Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle!

I have never read a book by Tingle before and having heard of his other works I wasn’t sure if this book would be something I would enjoy. I do enjoy horror and I’m glad I read this book. I really liked it. The main character Rose is being chased by demons and vomiting up flies. What’s not to love?

It may be triggering for some as this book does deal with conversion camps and religion. The horror was more on the YA side, so even if you’re not a huge horror fan, you should’ve still be able to enjoy this book.

Thank you to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

For fans of Hell Followed with Us and Monday’s Not Coming, this book is for you.

I was extremely captivated by Rose’s journey into her own understanding of rediscovering herself and unpacking the truth of the religion that she has been raised in her entire life.

“God is infallible; man is not.” The heart of this story is the horrors commuted under the guise of “God’s will.” It explores what it means to accept a queer identity despite judgement from family and the community, especially when that judgement devolves into abuse and violence. It speaks to the journey of losing the faith you’ve been given and picking up a faith you choose. In Rose’s case, this means losing her family, her friends, and her community, but it means gaining so much more. As a Christian myself, parts of this book were hard to read, but I think it landed in a place that both respects and challenges the concepts of faith and religion. My main criticism would be that sometimes scenes felt as though they were jumping from one thing to the next with little explanation, but even this has a plus side of making the story feel fast paced and interesting.

By now, I think that just about anyone who spends time in literary circles on the internet has heard of the legendary Chuck Tingle. While the pseudonymous author is probably best known for his short erotica works (aka “Tinglers”) like Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, Tingle has been making forays into longer stories in other genres. The one that caught my attention most was Camp Damascus, a horror novel about a gay conversion camp in Montana. Needless to say I leapt at the opportunity to read it as soon as I could.

Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling, a twenty year-old autistic woman living in Neverton, Montana. Rose and her family are members of The Kingdom of the Pine, a close-knit ultra-conservative Christian community that runs the titular camp. Unlike any other such camp, Camp Damascus boasts an unheard-of 100% success rate for kids who are sent there by parents who don’t want them to be gay. Rose’s life (and life at the Darling house in general) seems perfect. She’s about to finish high school (all Kingdom kids spend two years on church activities in between years of school, and so by senior year are older than any of their non-Kingdom or secular classmates). She loves volunteering for the church, and she loves her parents. She also loves research, and memorizing scientific facts alongside bible verses.

When Rose is out with her friends at the local swimming hole trying to build up the confidence to dive off the little cliff, she takes the hand of her classmate, Martina, and they leap together. It’s an exhilarating experience, and the first time that Rose has dared to do something so brave. However, when she returns to the top of the cliff to test her newfound courage and jump again, she sees something horrifying. An old, drowned-looking woman with unnaturally long fingers and white eyes appears to be staring at her, and no one else can see her. Later that night, in the middle of dinner with her parents, Rose coughs out a large mass that turns out to be a swarm of insects. Something is very, very wrong.

Soon, Rose’s investigative mind begins racing, trying to understand what she has seen and felt. Memories begin to surface, and she finds herself questioning everything that she has ever known about herself, her parents, The Kingdom of the Pine, and Camp Damascus. In Neverton, trying to uncover the truth is going to be impossible to do alone, but it’s the right thing to do, even if it means casting aside everything that she knew that made her Rose Darling.

Camp Damascus is a pitch-perfect horror novel. It’s a quick read, and it’s delightfully discomforting to a former member of a Christian community. This book is going to be absolutely life-changing for so many people. Tingle’s writing is tight, packing a solid story into under 300 pages. There are loads of little nods to his particular turns of phrase throughout as well. If you’ve ever given his Twitter feed a read, you’ll find yourself chuckling (ha) at some familiar wording. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Camp Damascus is out this Tuesday, July 18th. Go get yourself a copy and help to prove that love is real.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2023/07/13/camp-damascus-a-review/

Thank you for the advanced copy. This book is hard hitting, gritty, and enjoyable. May be featured on an upcoming episode of Your Rainbow Reads podcast.

Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus is a masterpiece of Horror. As a fan of the genre, I don’t say that lightly or use the term indiscriminately. This book examines grooming and indoctrination from the point of view of the incurious, those who fear to interrogate the world around them outside the purview of an ancient mythology that repeatedly contradicts itself, a mythology that was conceived many millennia before man had the capacity to conceptualize the vastness of life and its multitudes. The book isn’t anti-religion, though; it’s an examination of a distorted version of faith, of love, of imposing beliefs on others without their consent, and what that means for Rose Darling.

Rose’s memories of Camp Damascus are beginning to resurface while her strictly forbidden capacity for secular curiosity begins to outgain her religious training. Rose is the child of two parents who believed it would be better to have an obedient husk of a daughter than a gay one. They not only agreed to but participated in the extreme measures the camp, its counsellors, and its religious leader went to to suppress the nature of the children who are tortured there. Tough love is what they call it, but it’s a bastardization of the word love in every way. Their methods do not follow the directive that “love does not insist on its own way,” and it’s here that Tingle gives readers some delicious chills.

For as chilling as Camp Damascus is, it’s also triumphant and my heart soared in the end, as Rose discovers an untapped well of strength and courage and, best of all, love and acceptance. Not only the love of the girl she’d lost to the blankness left from her time at the camp but the love of a best friend and found family as well as acceptance within a faith that had abandoned her. Rose becomes the champion of her own story, and I rooted for her every step of the way.

Chuck Tingle poured a lot of feeling into this novel, and it resonates. He materializes the transformative power of compassion and kindness through a story that is meant to ask pointed questions about obedience and submission to a flawed extremist. Rose’s autism is also displayed early in the story as stimming before it’s named; it’s simply another facet of who she is and a testament to her parents’ inadequacies at the one job they were required to be good at. Camp Damascus is a story about a young woman growing up and growing away from her childhood, becoming her own person, told in the most extreme of ways. Horror fans should grab it.

Summer camp is one of the last places you want to find yourself if you’re living inside a horror novel. But the scariest thing about Camp Damascus? Rose can’t even remember attending it. Internet-famous erotica author Chuck Tingle deftly pivots to serious horror in his first traditionally published novel Camp Damascus, out tomorrow, July 18.
Twenty-year-old Rose is as devoted to Kingdom of the Pine—an insular sect that combines fundamentalist Christianity with worship of capitalism and their business-savvy Prophet—as her parents or pastor could hope. Despite her tendency to overindulge her curiosity with internet research rabbit holes, her oft-criticized habit of counting out patterns with her fingertips, and her confusing feelings toward her classmate Martina, Rose is trying her best to live a life guided by the Bible passages she’s memorized and the Prophet’s Four Tenets. But with just weeks to go before high school graduation (Kingdom of the Pine Kids take two gap years, and so are older than their peers), Rose’s life is thrown of course by a series of disturbing occurrences. Rose vomits up flies during family dinner one night, she’s being haunted by a demonic apparition wearing a red polo shirt like a camp counselor, and the infomercials for Camp Damascus—Kingdom of the Pine’s famously successful ex-gay conversion camp—start to feel alarmingly familiar. Even more concerning is the way her parents and church-appointed psychologist react, as though they have something to hide. When Rose’s demonic encounters take a deadly turn, she realizes the only way to get answers is to seek them out herself. As Rose fights to unlock her buried memories, reconnects with people from her clouded past, and sheds the worldview she’s been raised with, she discovers that the secret Kingdom of the Pine harbors is far bigger and more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.
Camp Damascus deftly mixes real-world and fictional horrors. This book is not for the faint of heart and hits just about every avenue of horror: On the body horror side are detailed descriptions of vomiting up flies and several limb-twisting injuries and gruesome deaths. On the psychological end, there’s Rose’s inability to trust her own memories and her fear that certain lines of thought will trigger supernatural apparitions. The supernatural horror here packs a punch: the unsettling demons with their lank, stringy hair and incongruous polo shirts are paired with brief glimpses into an almost Clive Barker-esque hell. But the true horrors at the heart of this story are dangers that plague our own world: religious fundamentalism and cults, homophobia and bigotry, conversion therapy and the abuse or abandonment of LGBTQ youth. Despite all these different forms of horror, however, the book also manages to include some moments of lighthearted humor and an ultimately uplifting message of empowerment.
I also love the way that this book plays with a classic slasher movie trope: summer camp. The most iconic example of this trope is the 1980 box office hit Friday the 13th, in which a group of carefree and sex-obsessed teens are picked off one by one by an unseen assailant. The mere existence of a summer camp in a horror novel is already priming us to be thinking about young folks being punished for their sexuality. In one twist on this trope, the sexuality being punished is not necessarily the engaging in sexual acts but rather sexual orientation—Camp Damascus is a camp devoted to “converting” gay youth back into Kingdom of the Pine’s conception of properly behaved Christians. In another twist, the majority of this book does is not actually spent at camp. Instead, Rose spends most of the novel unable to remember attending Camp Damascus or whatever horrors took place there. She has to slowly build her mental image of the camp back up, at first merely from infomercials, then by plumbing the brief flashes of memory that resurface, questioning fellow attendees, and reconnecting with her former camp counselor. Only once Rose has sketched in an outline of the horrors she experienced at Camp Damascus does she actually return to the camp grounds for a climactic confrontation. In this case, however, the villain isn’t one lone slasher out for revenge, but rather the whole power structure that has put the camp in place.
If you’re seeking a good summertime horror novel to send shivers down your spine while you read by the pool, Camp Damascus may be just what you’re looking for!

Before this book I would have said a heart-warming horror novel was an oxymoron and not something you could accomplish, but I'll be damned if Chuck Tingle didn't prove me wrong. I was blown away by his first foray into traditional publishing, finding it full of both fantastical and realistic horror, but also at its core a story about love. I LOVED the main character, she was exactly the kind of person a story like this needed to become even better, and her transformation as the book goes on was wonderful to behold. There's also a great message in here about the toxicity of Christianity, and how so often it portrays itself as a religion of love when it's more likely to spew hate. (Please note this is not the chase for all Christians, but the major sects seem to fall into this category). This book is honestly what I was hoping Hell Followed With Us was going to be; horrifying, gory, but ultimately hopeful. I have to say that going into this book I wasn't sure what I was going to get, but coming out of it I think I've found one of my favorite books of the year. I've already put up a shelf-talker for it at work and can't wait until I can get out on the floor to hand-sell it to customers. Chuck Tingle has proven that he's a new voice to watch in the horror genre, and I certainly hope he will be writing more books in the years to come. I'm also just gonna say that I think this could make a really great movie, if it was picked up by the right director, and now I'm kind of hoping someone is in talks for the film rights. GET ON THAT HOLLYWOOD!

This book was not exactly what I was expecting. I thought I knew exactly where this was going and is someways I did but in others I was absolutely shocked.
This was a really fun and creepy book. I really liked the characters and having grown up in a extrem religious background this is definitely something I understand and relate too. This is one of those books that I don't think is for everyone but the people it is for will absolutely adore it!