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Books by Chuck Tingle
Camp Damascus
by Chuck Tingle
· published 2023 · read 2024-02-14
★★☆☆☆
Gay horror – and man, am I not sure how I feel about this book. I'm not one for horror generally, to be fair, and it doesn't help how uneven this book is. It's got a lot of high points, especially in implicit worldbuilding. Showing off that the protagonist is very brainwashed by the Christian cult she grew up in: done very well. Showing (with only veeeery late telling) that she's autistic: also done well. Bits of everyday horror ("Dad, what happened to my door?" – "You never had a door, honey") – yup, that works. The whole setting: taking a gay conversion camp and making it supernaturally worse? Way cool. But then, the writing is extremely uneven: one moment strong, the next wooden and distant (and not just in the protagonist's thoughts, where I suppose it could be read to reflect her autism). The plot is rushed and not strong in the first place. I lost my suspension of disbelief around the place where the protagonist does a 180 in terms of worldview, and we're sometimes told that it's not easy, but … not shown, because it sure looks unreasonably easy. And either I started noticing it more and more, or the writing gets worse as the plot moves forward. I just couldn't take it seriously at some point, and then only continued to skim to see the ending.