In Camp Damascus, a young adult thriller by Hugo-award finalist Chuck Tingle, Rose is a smart, neurodivergent high school senior. She’s developing a crush on a girl in her class. She loves Jesus and scientific research.
We swiftly learn that Rose’s parents ration her time looking up information because they worry her hunger for knowledge is a kind of gluttony that will get in the way of her faith. Also, she vomits up a torrent of flies and has inexplicable freezing spells.
After that, things start to get weird.
Camp Damascus
Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire
July 18, 2023
I had assumed the plot of Camp Damascus would be linear and straightforward, with Rose being sent to the nearby gay conversion camp, Camp Damascus, and discovering horrors there. Maybe there would be some radicalizing love allowing Rose to, you know, prevail.
Instead, Rose starts to notice the ways her Church, The Kingdom of the Pine, has been gaslighting her for her whole life. A tale of demonic magic that rewrites timelines begins to unfold. And when Rose thinks about the pretty, appealing girl she has a crush on, she sees a demon in a polo shirt with a nametag, vomits bugs, and people start to die.
As she illicitly investigates, Rose starts to realize that her memories don’t add up, and it’s clear her parents are hiding something. It turns out the secrecy centers on what’s going on at Camp Damascus, Kingdom of the Pine’s celebrated gay conversion camp. Rose and her allies are drawn into an ultimate showdown between the control of gaslighting and the power of authentic love.
I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that Camp Damascus has a happy ending. Anyone familiar with Chuck Tingle’s online presence must expect that in any of his stories, love will triumph. While Tingle’s message stays consistent, his writing style is markedly different from his online presence. Camp Damascus is told from Rose’s point of view, and she doesn’t refer to anyone’s “trot,” or call anyone “buckeroo.”
Perhaps similarly surprisingly, given Tingle’s famous Tingler book titles, Camp Damascus is pretty free of sexual content, and any mention of butts at all.
Rather, I was reminded of a couple other speculative fiction novels in which young women find counterculture allies to fight back against institutionalized dangers. The first person, present tense narration from a smart but alarmingly secluded pretty young blonde woman reminds me of Sarah in Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls by Jane Lindskold, while The Kingdom of the Pine, the congregation Rose and her parents belong to, reminds me of the cult in Chaos on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer.
I found Camp Damascus cozy and fun, and I felt I was the target audience. However, I do wonder how different audiences will receive this. I am a secular person who has lived only on coasts. I have never come into contact with the kind of conversion camp featured, nor spent time in a small Church-dominated Montana town. I’ve also (to the best of my knowledge) never vomited flies, nor had my memories rewritten by demons.
Nevertheless, the hauntings and straightforward murders the demons commit seem less scary to me than actual abuses that have come to light associated with rightwing evangelical mega churches. I will be interested to learn how people with more experience with that kind of institution will react to Camp Damascus.
As I expect Camp Damascus to have a wide and enthusiastic readership, I look forward to finding out.
