#but yeah they're good books and chuck deserves aaaalllll the fame and book deals he's getting

[birdsagainsthumanity]

So I read Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays by @drchucktingle recently. I have thoughts; I have feelings. I will try to keep it spoiler free.

Of the two, I preferred Bury Your Gays. A few reasons; I connected with the story a little more. Maybe being English and raised in an entirely non religious family, I had nothing to hang onto with the religious horror aspect of Camp Damascus. I thought it was a brilliant story about being queer in a heavily religious world; the way people will destroy you to make you into what they see as what you're meant to be; found family, so on. The horror didn't impact me much, but the moments of success were brilliant. It's well written, it doesn't talk down to you. My only tiny nitpicks are that I feel the main character is able to separate from her faith just a touch too easy, and that sometimes it doesn't feel so much like horror as an adventure book, but that might just be my inability to be bothered by horror.

Bury Your Gays feels more on my pathways. The story really drags you along, that lost uncertainty. The queerness of the main character is a driving force without being the focus - just naturally written gay people, and it's brilliantly done. I feel like Chuck's writing might have 'matured' a little more here, which feels like I'm doing Damascus a disservice, but it feels like Chuck is just a little more confident in the full length novel writing? The characters were just a little more jarring, and I loved all the nods to the real life inspirations and horrors. It felt like there might have been one or two moments that hint at things that never come to be, but that might just be me reading too much into it.

They're both brilliant books and I really do recommend them. I've found myself thinking a lot on them and the stories whilst travelling recently, which is a pretty good sign of a book making an impact on me. I also recently read Dog Rose Dirt by Jen Williams, but I'm going to make a new post about that!