Let’s get it out of the way. Yes this is a Chuck Tingle book. Yes, it’s that Chuck Tingle. As if there would be another person named Chuck Tingle. But I heard this was the author of Space Raptor Butt Invasion’s first “serious” book, so naturally I was curious and went straight to the library.
Camp Damascus is a horror novel about a 20 year old named Rose who is deeply ingrained in a fictional Christian based cult heavily inspired by Mormonism. The cult has national fame and notoriety due to a conversion therapy camp they run that boasts a 100% success rate, but Rose starts to become deprogrammed when she starts seeing demons that no one else seems concerned about or want to acknowledge.
Overall, this book was fun to read. Chuck Tingle’s simplistic writing style works really well in the horror genre, making the book fly by and feel like watching a movie. I usually read at a fairly average pace, but I managed to finish this 250 page thriller in a few hours. The twists were all pretty predictable and the book ended with a few loose ends that were never tied, but the story was enjoyable enough that I didn’t care that much.
While a Christian cult is the villain of Camp Damascus, it didn’t necessarily villainize Christianity. It made a point of having several characters with varying views on religion, none being presented as better than the others despite the main character’s bias. The critiques in this story were more so about the individual people that twist religious doctrine to project their hatred under the guise of love.
Even though Chuck Tingle is an anonymous author so it’s impossible to know for sure, it’s easy to tell he has spent time around devout Christians. The language he used in Rose’s inner monologue and from the people that were a part of the cult will sound very familiar to anyone that has. It was a lot of fun to read that language change as she gets further away from the church and feels very real and jarring whenever she talks to other cult members.
Camp Damascus was a lot of fun to read and would be enjoyed by anyone looking to read a light horror novel. It’s scary, but won’t cause any nightmares. A lot happens, but it flies by so fast you won’t even realize. For me, it was a great first read of the year and got my brain ready to tackle something more difficult. If Chuck Tingle decides to write more “serious” novels, I’ll definitely be picking them up.
Fun Rating ⅘
Quality Rating ⅗
One response to “A Stay at “Camp Damascus””
[…] up Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White after reading Camp Damascus (read my review of that here) and wanting more. A kind librarian helped me out telling me the two books were very similar, and […]