Ready for Summer Reading?
It is that time of year. I have two reviews this week, of very different books.
Review: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
Chuck Tingle is a satirical smut writer, right?
Well, yes, but he also writes really good horror…of exactly the type I love. Camp Damascus gave me all the shivers I wanted. It probably should be YA horror, but I have to assume he was told he absolutely couldn’t do that under the same name…so he aged the character up just a tiny bit.
It's still about coming of age and coming out, though, and about the demons that queer people face.
Our protagonist, Rose, is being raised in an evangelical Christian cult that runs the most successful gay conversion camp in North America.
The horror is the how of that and maybe even the why. It slow burns, it relies on creepy figures and shadows, and it is absolutely free of explicit gore (although not of violence). It’s my kind of horror and I wish I could say more, a lot more, but it’s one of those books that’s hard to describe without spoilers…and which you don’t want to be spoilered on first read through.
So I’m just going to leave this one on Recommended. (with a CW for homophobia, but don’t worry, it’s only the bad guys…). And that includes teen horror readers.
Copy in Hugo packet (for Editor: Long Form).
Review: The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu
I’m always interested in the kind of weird Earth in the far future that almost might be secondary world fantasy books. Not so much Gene Wolfe, but Silverberg’s Nightwings, Sanford’s Plague Birds, and Swanwick’s Chasing the Phoenix.
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport falls squarely in this particular genre niche but, alas, is not one of my favorites. Moku is an intelligent robot of unknown origins…even to himself…who falls in with Lina and her robot brother, Bador. Shenanigans ensue…
The ending, though, lacks satisfaction. Maybe Basu is planning a sequel? I haven’t encountered this author before…alas, Indian authors don’t often get much traction in the west. This is something that needs to change.
I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t one of my favorites of the year, despite being in a preferred niche. Still, anyone who likes that kind of thing, should try it.
Copy in Hugo packet (for Editor: Long Form)