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!

Chuck Tingle’s long been known to the romance crowd for writing, well, very interesting stories called Tinglers. Part-satire, part… I don’t even know what, they’re fun if somewhat bewildering. Underlying everything, though, has been the author’s unwavering “LOVE IS REAL” devotion to acceptance and love in all its forms. When I heard he was coming out with a horror novel? Yeah, I could totally see that – and I also knew I had to get my hands on it as soon as possible. While I was expecting to be thoroughly creeped out and amused by some dark satire, I had not expected the kick in the feels that ultimately brought the book together for me.

Rose Darling has been raised as a faithful follower of the Kingdom of the Pine church, known mostly for Camp Damascus, a gay conversion camp with a 100% success rate. With the end of high school approaching, Rose is troubled by new feelings for her best friend and her lack of feelings for the guy who wants to be her boyfriend. Plus, she keeps catching glimpses of a strange ghastly woman. But one crack reveals even more issues within the church and secrets that everyone has been keeping from Rose.

“I love Jesus, I really do, but Jesus would want me to be cool.”


It’s hard to understand Rose without first understanding her faith. The Kingdom of the Pine is a Christian pretty-much-a-cult sect founded during the Industrial Revolution by their prophet who lost his hand machinery accident, then “pulled himself up by his bootstraps.” It’s Jesus but with capitalism, complete with church-sanctioned MLMs. It’s both the funniest and most true skewering of American Evangelical culture I’ve seen. It shows how every moment of Rose’s life is tied to the church, from frequent biblical quotes to how long she goes to school to family structure. Bonding with her mother means going for walks and coming up with imaginary sins for the houses they pass, while Rose suggests the biblical passages to “save” them. In other words, all the law and none of the compassion.

“I was taught the importance of perseverance by Kingdom of the Pine, so I suppose they brought this upon themselves.
I was also educated on vengeance.”


And then we have Rose. Rose has tried so hard to be the perfect daughter her parents want her to be. But Rose is something that is antithetical to their faith – curious. She’s also neurodivergent, so once she gets a path of research into her head, she can’t let it go. I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that Rose is forced to separate from her faith community. The tangle of emotions she feels – betrayal, relief, painful – is well described. But most of all? Rose is angry. Coming from a culture where women aren’t allowed to be angry, where “niceness” is valued over justice, it was so refreshing to see Rose come into her own.

Rose’s last name is Darling and there’s no missing the Peter Pan references. In the first chapter, a side character – and Rose’s crush – points out that Rose has no shadow, just like Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, and in this book, the shadow can be viewed as an absence of light, as a loss of memories, as a lack of grounding. There’s several other references to the play – including a point where Rose climbs throw a window, one that’s basically been dismantled by her friends to fool a security system – but most are too spoilery. Suffice it to say that it’s another added layer of meaning to the book.

There’s a lot to unpack about the various ways (real and imagined) LGTBQ+ people are persecuted and how they respond. The author carefully handles two extremely divergent reactions to religious abuse – atheism and seeking out a more accepting religious sect – and shows how friendship and acceptance can bridge that divide. Rose is also somewhere on the autism spectrum, and her family scolds her for her single-minded focus on subjects and her stimming. To Rose and to her friends? She’s just curious, a trait that’s to be admired. Simply put, I was not expecting this much sweetness in the middle of this horror book but rather than break me out of the book it only made me care about the characters more.

Of course, the book’s not perfect. While it quickly jumps into the action and the tempo remains mostly brisk, there’s some pacing issues in the middle that bog it down. But on the whole, the characters redeem that.

“We haven’t been blessed by some incredible superpower from the great beyond, we’re just curious.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.”


Overall, ok, wow, Chuck Tingle can really write horror, too – and without losing some of his trademark vibe. Highly recommended to any fan of LGBTQ+ horror!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Camp Damascus is a fight for queer love wrapped up in a very good horror novel. I'm not trying to elevator pitch it, but while I was reading I was getting Goosebumps vibes (in the pretty much anything can happen in a Goosebumps book), I was getting Hellraiser vibes (early Hellraiser). It's just a good, unsettling horror book that shows that queer love is important and right and I'm very glad this book exists.

This may well be the most difficult review I’ve ever tried to write.

If *Camp Damascus* were written by any other author, I’d probably give it 3.5 stars. It’s got a great premise for a horror novel: a conversion therapy camp that boasts of a 100% success rate, but achieves this through the use of literal demons. But the execution wasn’t great. Not terrible, but not great. The protagonist’s character growth was faster and more complete than the story could support; the bad guys felt very flat. But the story picked up at the end, and overall I was satisfied with it.

But here’s where this review gets challenging. By every objective measure, *Camp Damascus* is a FAR better written book than the rest of Dr. Tingle’s extensive bibliography. And saying something like “Chuck Tingle should stick to what he’s good at: being intentionally and ironically bad” makes no sense at all.

Here’s the thing. Even though this book isn’t *trying* to be cheesy and terrible, I still could tell it was a Tingler. Part of this is in the criticisms I mentioned above; it felt like Dr. Tingle has spent so long in his usual groove that he wasn’t able to shake it off quite as much as he could have; hence we get flat villains talking about Jesus and sin that don’t have the depth of the protagonist.

But I could *also* tell it was a Tingler because of the depth and empathy that always lies behind the Bigfoots and biker unicorn bad boys and velociraptors and well-endowed abstract concepts. Everything Dr. Tingle writes has a message of acceptance of people as they, and an intolerance for bigotry and hatred, and that shone through here. It would have been so easy for the protagonist to end up hostile to religion; she isn’t. One of the good guys, at the ultimate climax of the book when it seems certain they’re all about to die, starts praying. Despite going through Camp Damascus, this character remains a devout Christian. And the protagonist accepts and respects his faith, even if she no longer has hers.

So, Buckaroos, here’s my final takeaway. This isn’t a *great* book, but the person who wrote it is a great *person*, and I hope they write more.

Creepy and weird and moving and affirming. Full of body horror along with the horror that can be wrought in the name of faith and religion.

So while I've heard of Chuck Tingle many times in the past (and had loads of giggles from his inventive titles and book concepts), I've never read any of his books. I've been meaning to give one a try, but just never got around to it. However, when I saw his post on Twitter about this book and read the synopsis, I figured this was as good a time as any to give him a try. Obviously this book is different from a lot of his other tinglers, but not in a bad way. In fact, I now want to try out some of his other books more than before, just because his writing style is super interesting and engaging.

Okay, now on to Camp Damascus itself. So I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Even though I'd read the synopsis and had a general idea of what the book was about (a Christian conversion camp with even more sinister intentions than usual), the beginning of the book really threw me for a loop. The creepy figure watching as Rose was out having fun with her friends, enjoying the last moments of her high school life, helped set the mood. But the extra creepy body horror during dinner with her parents, oof, I'm glad I wasn't actually eating while reading that. And it all seemed to happen so suddenly that I went back and reread it to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped some pages (I hadn't, and it was still amazingly gross the second read). And the creeps just kept on coming, getting progressively weirder and creepier until the big inciting event that changed Rose's point of view (sorry I'm being vague but I don't want to give away what happened because it made my jaw drop and I want other people to get that experience, too).
While some plot points were sorta easy to suss out (partly due to knowing about the conversion camp from the synopsis while Rose is slowly learning about it and partly due to having grown up in evangelical culture and being able to see some of the machinations and manipulations going on), I thoroughly enjoyed being along for the ride and finding out how Chuck was going to put all this together. I loved Rose finding out more about herself, finding new friends and family, and finding her own sense of power that they had tried to take from her. I liked that, though Rose was somewhat stumbling into discoveries thanks to her manipulated memories, through sheer determination and grit she was able to persevere and even win against forces so much bigger than herself. Rose refused to give up, on herself as well as the people she cared about.
There are some definite hard topics in this book, especially from any LGBTQ+ readers who might have grown up in evangelical circles, but seeing Rose and her friends defeat and overcome the forces arrayed against them was nicely cathartic for me (also seeing the final fate of some of the perpetrators of the camp's evil was...well horrifying but also vindicating).

All this to say that Camp Damascus is a creepy, weird, moving, affirming, wonderful book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading at the beginning of Pride month and I really hope Chuck writes more horror like this (seriously his grasp of body horror was top notch in my book. I mean, I'm sort of a baby when it comes to horror so if you're a reader who loves the super crazy, visceral, terrifying body horror, this might be a bit tame for you, but for a baby horror fan like me it was just creepy and gross enough). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me access to an e-Arc copy to read and review.

This is my first time reading Chuck Tingle, so I honestly went into it with zero expectations. I was impressed and hooked into the story the first moment things seem to feel off for our main character.

Camp Damascus follows strict religion following young woman Rose, as she realizes something is off with both herself and those close to her. She starts seeing an unsettling figure, starts doubting her own feelings, second guesses the motives of her parents , and starts digging for answer to things she can't remember. What she uncovers is a conspiracy that stems from the gay conversion camp that she grew up around. Can she believe in a God when those around her are uses his word to destroy a part of who she is and will she stand by while others suffer as she has or put a stop to it.

This is definitely a lot different from what I have been reading, but I was captivated by the story nonetheless. It's a Queer small town horror story filled with conspiracies, religious trauma, cults, demons, and a satisfying ending for our heroine.

‘Camp Damascus’ is the horror debut for eccentric erotica author Chuck Tingle. A religious, queer, sci-fi horror set in Montana, the story took off from page one and didn’t stop. The visuals in this book were horrific and terrifying, but at times lent itself to a bit of dark humor; and blended with the main characters logical, yet sometimes innocent, inner turmoil of her own beliefs and sexuality made for such a great read. I hope we see more horror from Tingle!

With Camp Damascus Chuck Tingle has created a horror story that is equal parts horrifying and real. While the horror elements are slow to begin, once they do they will grab your attention and make you see the fear in the very real world that Chuck Tingle has created. The monsters are terrifying because we know these monsters. They are the ones around gay teens all the time and Chuck Tingle does a fantastic job of showing the very real terror in our real world. 

I also like the character that he creates with Rose, especially with her being autistic. Those elements and her voice come through clearly and he is extremely respectful to those elements, treating Rose and her voice with love and truthfulness. The one oddity is that Rose seems younger, especially at the beginning of the novel and it did throw me out of the story until I saw that there was a purpose to presenting her as a teenager. It is crucial so allow time for the author’s reasons to shine through. It enhances the story and the horror elements. 

I love that the monsters are not what you expect or maybe they are…..?  If you’ve lived in the real world, you’ll know there are scarier things than demons. But Camp Damascus has all of those fears and monsters, each well written and will cause your flesh to crawl, just a bit. The ending is just fantastic and well worth the slow build of the novel at the beginning. The novel is horrifying and real which makes it even scarier.

Five stars, no notes. Mr. Tingle, you are amazing and I want to be like you when I grow up. A delightful, twisty tale that kept me up all night reading.

I feel like Camp Damascus was different than I was expecting, but I can't put my finger on why? Either way, it wasn't a bad thing! I really enjoyed the story, and it had a lot to offer. I will say, and I have seen this mentioned before, that it did feel a bit more like young adult at times? That isn't a bad thing at all, because I quite like young adult, but just a FYI.

We are introduced to Rose, who has been living an incredibly sheltered life in a town that is best known for its conversion camp. Which is gross from the start, as you can imagine. Rose is part of the Creepy Church™ that runs the camp, and as such, she must see a "therapist", who is totally licensed and not at all a fraud. Just kidding, he is just some random leader of Creepy Church™ and his whole existence is to push these awful beliefs on people but instead of church, he calls it counseling. This is not a spoiler, it's mentioned pretty early, and also, you just know because this guy is trash. As are Rose's parents, frankly, especially the dad. My point is, you are going to hate a lot of characters, real quick.

Rose is also on the autism spectrum, which I had inklings of while I was reading, and was so glad that it was confirmed, because I think the author did a wonderful job with the representation. It wasn't her whole personality or anything, but it fit with a lot of her thoughts and behaviors, and I really appreciated that. Anyway, can't say too much about the actual plot, because that would be rude. It gets a little... out there at times, but I appreciated the message nonetheless. I also really liked the way the author handled the religion aspect: he clearly addressed how messed up religion can be and is in many cases, but didn't totally vilify all religion.

The book clearly has a ton of heart, and I adored the characters. Rose, definitely, but also the people she meets along the way, whom I cannot really discuss because spoilers. But I think it brought the aspect of found family into play, and I really loved that Rose had the opportunity to find people who cared for her.

Bottom Line: This was such an incredibly soul-filled story, and clearly close to the author's heart. Loved the characters, loved the message.

Brilliant camp horror by an iconic writer. This is worlds away from Chuck Tingle's erotica, but the sense of razor-sharp commentary and wit is still present. While I don't think this book will be for everyone, it will be deeply healing for anyone -- especially queer readers -- who have suffered religious trauma of any degree. It's an angry, frustrated scream of a novel that manages to also take faith seriously. A solid recommendation for anyone, but a must-read for any previously religious queer.

A magnificent novel, much more than just a horror story or a queer coming of age, which blends true and real evil with demons and lore. A compulsively readable story that shines the light on how far people will go in the name of religion and God without realizing, or caring about, the very real hurt and pain they cause. Using certain fantastical elements to represent and portray the terror caused by these ideas, this is not a book you’ll soon forget.