Review: Tropical Horror
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
I find horror stories set in foreign countries to be some of the most terrifying.  Compounding the supernatural terror the characters are going through is a sense of isolation; they're far from home and a friendly face is in short supply.  Such was the case in Sacrifice Island.Jemma and Alex are paranormal investigators that travel around the world doing research for Jemma's books.  Jemma comes across the diary of a woman that detailed events on a supposedly haunted island in the Philippines and convinces Alex that investigating this island would make a great chapter in her latest book.  Things progress in a fairly predictable manner from here, but Dearborn tweaks enough genre tropes to keep things interesting until the end.  She's also created a very interesting character with Jemma, and I'd love to read more about the previous investigations mentioned in this novella.This story's greatest strength is that Dearborn takes an imminently recognizable monster and renders it mysterious again by using Filipino folklore that will be unfamiliar to the vast majority of readers, rather than than the more-familiar American and European stories.