World’s Greatest Author and two time Hugo Awards nominee Chuck Tingle has spent years titillating and educating the internet about how Love Is Real and is for everyone. He’s penned masterpieces like: Space Raptor Butt Invasion, Pounded In the Butt By My Own Butt, Bigfoot Sommelier Butt Tasting, Not Pounded By Anything And That’s Okay, and (a personal favorite) Living Inside My Own Butt For Eight Years —Starting A Business And Turning A Profit Through Common Sense Reinvestment And Strategic Targeted Marketing.

This man has used his skills and hyper-focusing power to churn out dozens and dozens of tales about love, inclusion, consent, friendship, and, well… dinosaurs.

Camp Damascus is Chuck’s foray into the big publishing world and the folks at @tornightfire have hit it out of the park acquiring this novel. While it has its flaws, Camp Damascus tells a heartfelt story of self discovery while wading through the dangers of radicalized religion and hate. Truly terrifying and deeply moving, author named Chuck delivers a memorable, albeit rushed, journey through a “straight camp” with horrible secrets.

Camp Damascus - 3.5/5 ⭐️
Chuck Tingle - 10/5 🌟🌈

Wow, holy crap, this was amazing!
I was hoping I was going to like this one but I wasn't prepared for how much I would absolutely LOVE it. I DEVOURED it. I didn't want to put it down, it was just that fricken good.

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle was so freaking good.
I found the book highly imaginative with interesting multi-layered characters.
I enjoyed learning more about them and their backstory and I was as curious about them as the mystery.
There are heavy themes in the book as can be expected.
A story with an original plot, strong characters, and a writing style that could cut glass.
It’s a very compelling, sometimes rage-inducing, and a very good story.
I really enjoyed the writing style, which is pure brilliant, I was sucked in so quick my head was spinning.
I loved the setting and the atmosphere. The descriptive storytelling is just mind blowing.
The supernatural element was intriguing. And the horror was phenomenal.
I hope Chuck Tingle continues to create more stories like this.
Because my only con is it the CD wasn’t longer.

Keep in mind this book will absolutely not be for everyone.
But I loved it.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Ya know, I was not expecting this. I have been aware of Chunk and his various escapades throughout the years, but the announcement of this release came as a total surprise to me. I thought that overall this was really good. I enjoyed the commentary, and it seemed either well-researched or to be firsthand knowledge (which, again, was not something I expected from Tingle). I think my only drawback for this work is that it really takes a handful of chapters to figure out the direction the story is going to go in and the writing could be a little disjointed at times. But overall, I think this is going to be well-received as a campy older YA horror!

Camp Damascus is the horror debut for author Chuck Tingle. As a Tingle Stan, this was certainly not the book I would have ever expected for him to put out however I enjoyed it thoroughly. The commentary was interesting as you could tell Tingle had alot of knowledge of specifically Christian religion. This is not something you'd expect from Tingle, but it definitely has his flare. Even in his satire works he manages to add commentary about Homophobia, racism, etc. So getting a "serious" horror novel with commentary was exciting.
Talking about the book in specifics, it was definitely a weird one. In the first 3-4 chapters I had no clue where the story was going and as things slowly got revealed my intrigue got higher and higher. My one critique for the book is the writing was a times clunky. This book is short at 256 pages, however it still felt a bit too long. Overall it was an interesting look at religion and homophobia and will definitely be a hit in the genre.

Camp Damascus is a clever, if flawed, entry into the queer horror genre that reads like YA. Rose Darling lives with her parents in Neverton (Peter Pan references left out to dry by the narrative), which is the home of Camp Damascus, the biggest and "most successful" gay conversion camp in the US. When Rose starts seeing gruesome figures, she has to follow the trail of her own past to find out what lies at the heart of Neverton.

The good things first:

Camp Damascus is compulsively readable. It reads quickly and has enough going on that a reader won't be bored by the writing style-very YA-esque. It's also probably an important book. In that way that I believe it's important to have more books about religious trauma and queer people freeing themselves from religious/social/familial oppression. Also, this book had very good autistic representation.

The bad things: The YA qualities aren't all good. The characters and the plot are pretty flat, and there are some pretty glaring gaps in information that don't telegraph very well. One spoiler-free example is that Rose often refers to her parents by their first names as well as "Mom" and "Dad." What a great opportunity for the author to show us more about the (apparently) complicated dynamic of the family, but not only does it seem out of place, there's no explanation given for it at all. There were a lot of wasted opportunities here that could have been used to enrich and deepen the characters and their experiences. Thus making for a more fulfilling reading experience.

Camp Damascus is the epitome of a 3-star read for me. I liked it, but I think it had so much more potential than what was realized.

Thank you to NetGalley and TorNightfire

This is going to be the best horror novel of the year!! I could not put it down, I was on the edge of my seat rooting for Rose! For queers who love horror this is THE book of 2023

After reading two chapters of this book, I needed to know if Chuck Tingle had other books that I could read. I was hooked with the writing. I was then shocked to find that this is their first horror novel. I am obsessed with the way this story was written. I had no clue what I was getting into and that excited me. Some scenes were hilarious, some were horrific, and others were horrifically hilarious. I love horror novels that don’t take themselves too seriously while also giving a genuinely entertaining storyline.

Some of the religious themes really struck a chord with me and I was able to connect to some of the elements of this story. While this is a horror novel, conversion camps and other horrific lgbtq treatment occurs because of religious beliefs. This really dealt with it in a different way and I’d be intrigued what other horror novels are in store.

"A hunger for knowledge is still a hunger."

Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus portrayed the ins and outs of a remote, ultra-religious Montana town in such an incredibly detailed way. As the story unfolded, you learn more and more about the Christian prophet that founded the Kingdom of the Pines church, which nearly everyone in town belongs to. If not the Kingdom, community members are at least some flavor of conservative Christianity. While a fictional religious sect, it felt real and familiar.

Rose Darling, our protagonist, starts to uncover a rotten secret about herself and the town's anti-gay conversion camp, which also serves as the main economic boon of Neverton. Everything seems to revolve around Camp Damascus, which boasts a 100% success rate. Rose starts to question how that's possible, and finds herself on a journey of exorcising demons, finding true family, and challenging her faith.

I found that this story had a really honest and beautiful representation not only of what it's like to be queer in a city like Neverton, but what it's like to be different point blank. If you know what you're looking for, it's clear from early on that Rose is autistic, a fact which she confirms later in the narrative. It's rare to see an autistic character find love for themself and from those around them, and this book delivers on that. Rose is loved and appreciated for who she is, and when she finds family in her friends, they don't try to hold her back from doing what she loves. They help her hone the things that make her her, whether it's a stim or a cue card for social situations with facts and conversation starters; they help her benefit from those things instead of encouraging her to tamp them down like her blood family does.

This story also doesn't shy away from the supernatural and horror aspects of the genre, and it does so in a way that feels natural within the narrative. I thoroughly enjoyed the way this book grounds itself in science while still positing that maybe there's some things that science hasn't figured out how to explain yet. It makes the argument that all things are governed by science, even those things that are based in faith and supernaturalism, and it makes it in a convincing and thought-provoking way.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with the stomach for the occasional gore-y look into Hell and demonic possession. It's earned and fits well with the story, but it's definitely present in a way that might not be every reader's cup of tea. If it's yours, though, you'll want to savor that cup and will probably even want a refill.

Thank you to TOR/Forge publishers and NetGalley for access to an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

With a concept like this and the name Chuck Tingle attached to it my hopes were very high for this book. Maybe it's my expectations fault but it just fell flat for me and I wasn't really happy with the final product.

I’m of two minds with this one. I’ve been a huge Chuck Tingle fan for forever, I love his books and I love him on Twitter, so I was so incredibly excited for a tradpub book (from Tor no less!!) about gays getting revenge on a conversion camp. Overall, I thought the ideas were great—the camp’s methods for their 100% conversion success rate were horrifying, and the fundamentalist Christian practices that form the family’s religious sect seemed true to many fundie circles in that culty, appalling way. The pacing was neat for the first half, letting the tension build and feeling Rose’s disorientation around her way of life was great.

It started to fall apart a bit in the back half for me, though. I didn’t feel connected to Saul or Willow (willow’s was kind of by design but I still wanted more), and I wanted more retribution by the end of it. I kinda felt Rose resolved her internalized business way, way too quickly, and pulled a 180 on her views on her entire life without much mental struggle. I suppose it could be argued she worked on herself during the time before she went to Camp Damascus, but we as readers didn’t see any of that personal growth. No internalized homophobia from being raised in a homophobic culty religion that makes up your entire identity, family, friends, therapy, and community for 20 years? Mmm. I don’t know about that. Rose kind of just went “oh. I’m gay? Cool. Let’s kill demons.” which, slay, girlboss, wish that could be me. I don’t know, it just lacked a bit of the depth I would’ve expected from characters who had to disentangle their entire lives from everything they’d ever known.

(As a very minor, nitpicky note, the book was written in first person, and yet for some reason the main character sometimes refers to her parents by their first names even before she’s essentially disowned, so it wasn’t like a “taking back power” thing, and it threw me off.)

At the end of the day, I think there were a lot of great ideas in this book, and I have an overall positive impression of it, I just feel it could have benefited from….. more. More characterization, more mental analysis, more relationship building, more memories of Camp Damascus and the times before, more body horror and demons torturing homophobes and the community crumbling with a faith crisis. I just want more Chuck Tingle! I can’t wait to see what he does next.

If you drop the name Chuck Tingle into Google or Amazon you will be presented with a wild list of seriously over the top LGBTQ+ titles which are clearly not suitable for a school library. However, even though Camp Damascus has been written for an adult audience it could be easily be read by a YA audience and could be a perfect read for teens who are struggling with their sexuality and particularly with coming out or problems with their parents. It is not explicit in any sexual sense and even though there is some body horror towards the end I would happily recommend it to anybody aged fourteen plus. Much of Tingle’s previous work has been self-published and the fact that Camp Damascus has been picked up by Tor Nightfire indicates that this novel should have much broader appeal than his earlier erotic work. The backdrop to the story was the world’s most effective gay conversion camp. Nestled in the Montana wilderness, parents send their children from around the world to experience the program’s 100% success rate. It takes it’s time getting around to why the program is so successful, but it is pretty wild and heads deep into the realms of supernatural horror. In the UK there is ongoing legislation to outlaw this type of therapy, which to say it is frowned upon is an understatement, so it was fascinating to read a novel which (kind of) gives the inside track.

Rose Darling is a classic unreliable narrator, but do not hold it against her, as it is not her fault. Early in the novel, whilst having dinner with her parents, Rose begins to vomit out flies and her family are strangely unperturbed. When she returns to her bedroom she notices her bedroom door has been removed from its hinges, or was it always like that? The reader is not sure either way. We realise that Rose goes to an Evangelical Christian Church, she drops his hints and clues as the story moves on and the reader realises it might even be a sect or a cult. Rose begins to see things, thinks she is being haunted by a demon and has strange feelings for another girl. But being gay and a member of this church is forbidden, but nightmares blend with memories and all roads lead back to Camp Damascus, where she has never been (or has she?) I enjoyed this book a lot and ultimately it is about your queer people facing and conquering their inner demons, some readers might have preferred slightly more restraint with the supernatural element and ending, but it was still a wildly enjoyable romp. AGE RANGE 14+

This blew me away, in the best ways. I wasn't sure what I'd think and whether any potential satirical element would undercut my enjoyment of the horror, but this is a PHENOMENAL book, with great characters, over-the-top narration balanced with solid plotting, and a pretty great, cathartic ending. Loved it, and I'll be buying a copy as soon as it's released.

I really wanted to really like this. I have been so curious what a full length Chuck Tingle novel would be like, and I do have to say I’m disappointed.

I liked the idea of this story a lot, but the execution wasn’t quite there for me. It felt like some things were left unfinished, or that some things happened too easily. I don’t know if it would benefit from tighter editing or what could have been done to pull the story together a bit more, but there was really something lacking overall in the story.

It’s basically a horror story about a conversion camp being run by a church. It’s told from the POV of Rose, who is a member of the church and community. As the book progresses you learn that things aren’t quite as Rose thought. Overall I liked the characters. One thing I thought was odd was that Rose is autistic, though it’s revealed in a very showy way. I think she’s written in a way that could be read as autistic, but then it’s revealed/confirmed when she breaks into her therapist’s office and is going through her file and she’s like “he doesn’t even have my autism noted”. It just felt off to me? I don’t know.

Anyway, I like what Tingle was trying to do here, it just didn’t work for me.

3 stars

I’m not entirely sure that I liked the writing style. There was a lot there that didn’t really need to be added. However, the story and premise were really good. Unique in my personal reading experiences. I love lost horror with the religious aspects.
Overall this was good, and I enjoyed my time with it.

CAMP DAMASCUS by Chuck Tingle

Release Date: July 18th, 2023
General Genre: Horror
Subgenre/Themes: Coming-of-Age, Cults, Human Monsters, Psychological, Small Town Horror, Religious Stuff,
Writing Style: Character-Driven, Brisk Pace,

What You Need to Know: It will be interesting to see how readers with different religious backgrounds engage with this book. I was raised agnostic by parents who leaned, atheist. In marriage, I started attending an evangelical church with my husband and eventually identified as a Christian even though I still held to my liberal views on everything and felt like an outcast in some Christian circles for my "radical beliefs". In 2020 while churches were closed, I realized I never wanted to go back. I started "deconstructing" my faith and now I no longer identify as a Christian but I'm still on a faith-based journey to personalize where I stand. This book is extremely important as an in-depth, fictionalized (but realistic) intimate look at the dangers of heterosexual-white-American-evangelical-monotheistic purity culture and their dogmatic beliefs.

My Reading Experience: Triggered. Very, very triggered. In a good way though. It was validating and soul-edifying to read this book knowing that the author behind it all, Dr. Chuck Tingle, the life-giving energy behind 'LOVE IS REAL', knew about the secret bullshit going on behind evangelical closed doors and was exposing it.
I got too close to the kind of evangelical religiosity depicted in this fictional book about a radically successful gay conversion camp. To the average reader untouched by evangelicalism (although, nobody is really untouched since their political activism affects us all) seems too exaggerated to be true except the horror of this book is that it's not. It's not that far removed from the truth and that's what makes this book so important. But it might be hard for some to read.
I was already standing in line for a book like this, the story of a young woman who lives with her parents in a small town. They attend a church that feels like a charismatic, mega-church where the pastor is a bit of a cult of personality and his followers are like his cheerleaders. It made me think of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll. These very charming and emotionally manipulative religious leaders able to whip their followers into a frenzy. Has anyone seen the documentary Jesus Camp?
That film is a companion piece to this book.
So the MC of Camp Damascus, this young woman, is happily committed to the same ultra-religious lifestyle as her parents. Very purity culture driven, moralistic, fueled by behavior modification and keeping those sins and any sinful thoughts in check. Even caffeine is frowned upon because it's an unnatural stimulant and capable of altering one's state of being.
Tingle does an excellent job of setting up the dominoes so that once a conflict is introduced and that first domino is tapped, the rest of them start a chain reaction until we're speeding toward the climax/resolution.
I don't want to get too far into spoiler territory, but there are some exciting reader-discovery moments where the force behind the success of the gay conversion camp is revealed and I applaud Tingle for flipping the script on a classic (and favorite!) horror trope. Very clever. I loved it.
I think the temptation here for some horror readers will be to compare this book to the viral success of his "Tinglers", his erotic fiction but I believe this book is Tingle's attempt to build a bridge into the mainstream horror market so the message will reach a broader audience. It's my hope that Camp Damascus will land in the right readers' hands.

Final Recommendation: Camp Damascus does read on the YA spectrum of horror but it's written to appeal to all ages. I enjoyed it. I think it's important and I hope that it will inspire more books like it to rise up and draw attention to the horrors of heterosexual-white-American-evangelical-monotheistic purity culture and their dogmatic beliefs. Especially concerning the LBGTQIA+ community.

Comps: Jesus Camp (documentary), Pray Away (documentary), They/Them (Blumhouse horror movie w/Kevin Bacon), Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass

This was good! The beginning few chapters are truly terrifying and the idea is fantastic. There were two major weaknesses imo; one that the actual otherworldly mechanics of the camp are way less scary than the engagement with evangelical extremism, and two that the fallout of Rose's choice is extremely heavy handed. There's not as much subtlety or complexity in the negotiation of religious trauma as there could have been.

Rose Darling has spent her life trying to follow the tenets of her religious community, Kingdom of the Pine in the small town of Neverton, Montana. Now 20 years old, Rose is getting ready to graduate from high school (adherents to the church's teachings take a year off after 5th grade and again after 10th to devote themselves to study of their prophet's teachings). Her parents keep reminding her of the importance of fighting temptation and obeying the guidelines of the church, even if she doesn't always agree or understand why. One of her classmates, Isaiah, is interested in her and while her parents try to persuade her that it's time to marry and settle down, Rose is more concerned that she's attracted to another friend, Martina. Just as she's becoming aware of these strange new feelings, odd things start to happen to her. During dinner with her parents, a sudden tickle in her throat turns into an expulsion of flies from her mouth (which doesn't seem to alarm her parents as much as it should). She also glimpses an odd apparition that no one else seems to notice. It is a woman with pale features, stringy dark hair, and a nametag that reads Pachid. Rose also begins to have flashbacks involving a young woman she can't remember ever meeting. When she also starts to have vague memories from the church-run Camp Damascus, set outside of town and which boasts a 100% success rate in turning gay young people straight, Rose decides to ignore her parents and therapist and do some digging on her own to get to the truth.

The story was quite interesting and timely as to the harm that can be done by people who justify any cruel or inhumane treatment as necessary to "fix" someone. The explanation of the procedures the religious group uses to re-program the people who fall into their clutches is truly horrifying. I enjoyed discovering the truth with Rose and seeing what terrible ordeals the characters had to go through just to be themselves.

I liked this foray into horror from Chuck Tingle. I thought that the protagonist and the friends she (re-)collects throughout the story were sweet. The religion/demon theme was pretty unique, and I thought that there were some genuinely creepy moments of lurking monstrosities. The ending feels like a bit of a revenge fantasy (not that I super mind?) and perhaps the mechanics of the monsters were a bit too over-explained so as to be less scary. However, this was a solid read and one that took on some tough topics (conversion therapy, religious trauma, being cast out from your family) very gamely.

If I read the first fifth of a story and don’t care about where it’s going, it’s a DNF. I seem to break that rule a lot, though, and I broke it here; I pushed to 33% before I called it quits. So I have read the first third, rather than the first fifth, and I was not impressed. The first-person narration is very blunt and dry, with a lot more telling than showing; I was disgusted rather than actually showing or conveying that disgust. And while there might be twists later in the novel, I didn’t find the whole vomiting-flies, seeing-demons thing especially interesting or original, even with the mind/memory-fuckery going on.

I feel like a surprising number of Horror writers forget, or don’t realise, that no matter what horrible visuals they come up with, very little of it is frightening without immersive sensory detail. It’s not enough to have a character vomiting flies; what does that feel like? Describe the sensations in the character’s throat, on their tongue, the taste! Compare the glistening of the larvae to the wet spaghetti they’ve been vomited into! Make me feel it; make my stomach heave! You can’t just…lean on the fact that most readers find the idea of bugs in our mouths icky, you know? That kind of shorthand works when we’re talking about a visual medium – a painting, a comic, a film – maybe because we’re wired to react more viscerally to things we see. But a static image you sketch in my head with dry, undescriptive prose is not going to have the same reaction unless you happen across one of my particular triggers, which is not something you can depend on managing with every – or even most – readers.

It doesn’t help that Rose isn’t a very interesting character – I like that she’s curious, but she’s also very placid, and when that placidity starts to change…it happens very quickly, and without any obvious trigger. I didn’t understand or believe in her pretty abrupt transformation into someone who doubted her parents, her therapist, her God. What’s fuelling this change? What’s pushing her away from her Church? Did I miss something? Even if I did, it’s not great that something that major is small enough to be missed!

My main issue, though, is definitely the fact that Tingle tells us what Rose is feeling – and by implication, what we should be feeling – instead of, you know, making us feel it. That never works for me. And the lack of description – particularly sensory description – means absolutely none of the horror elements actually strike me as frightening in any way.

Sorry. Pretty major fail.

The eponymous camp is as much of a nightmare as this book is a joy. It's a story of hope, as a young woman recovers from damage suffered at the hands of an extremist cult, both over the course of her lifetime and as a result of her enforced stay at the cult's outwardly "successful" conversion therapy camp.

Supernatural horror elements are handled head-on, but cleverly, and the execution of this high-concept story is straightforward and effective. As with Tingle's previous horror novella Straight, this title's content is appropriate for YA horror readers and up.

This is an excellent, wholesome, and big-hearted read about young queer people facing down their personal demons. It is absolutely terrifying, but the social horror implications are mostly dyed into the fabric of the book, highlighting the plight of one girl and her found family against very real demons.

This is much easier to find and buy now that Tingle's being published by TOR Nightfire (and that is a brilliant move for both of them). My difficulty with this title is that I'm going to give it to the people who need it, and they'll want more just like it, and Tingle hasn't published them yet.