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.