A review by fe_lea
The Sacrifice by Rin Chupeco

mysterious

3.75

 When locals tell you to leave a haunted island, you follow them. 

Legends say that there is a Dreamer god asleep in the island of Kisapmata who grants unimaginable power if you give him eight sacrifices. Alon, a local teen, guides a group of Hollywood people who are there to document the evidence of the existence of this god. As soon as they arrive, a giant sinkhole appears revealing a giant balete tree with a mummified corpse in its branches. The crew also starts seeing visions and become victims to the island’s curse. 

I don’t usually read YA, but I give an exception for Rin Chupeco’s YA horror novels. Ever since reading the author’s The girl from the well duology, I became a fan of their writing. Chupeco just knows how to inject an eerie and spooky atmosphere to her books. I enjoyed the prose and how the horror tied in with anti-colonial themes. The lore hooked me from the start too. It was new and interesting yet nostalgic as it reminded me of horror stories surrounding haunted islands and balete trees from my childhood. Even the twist surprised me. This isn’t a perfect book though. First of all, the author used Tagalog for the locals when it should have been Waray or even Bisaya. The pacing was also uneven that it felt like a lot was crammed in the last quarter. 

My big mistake though was listening to the audiobook instead of reading this with my eyeballs. I was listening to Eartheater and Perfume before The Sacrifice, and I appreciated how the audiobook narrators of those two novels took great care in pronouncing the Spanish and French words and phrases there. I can’t say the same for this one. In fact, I never had luck with audiobooks by Filipino authors. I always hated them. There weren’t a lot of Tagalog words or phrases here so I couldn’t understand how the narrator didn’t couldn’t be bothered learning them. And then here’s what’s worse. Alon was given an American accent (while butchering the Tagalog words), which would have been fine if the narrator was consistent, but then he gave one of the local characters the stereotypical Filipino accent that honestly sounded like the stereotypical Indian accent. 

Note to self: never pick up a Filipino-authored audiobook narrated by a foreigner or Fil-Am who can’t speak any of the Filipino languages, can’t be bothered to at the very least learn the proper pronunciation, or can’t let go of the stereotypical Filipino accent.