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Didn´t anyone tell them to leave the haunted, bloodsoaked cult object back in the jungle? Sigh

Mystical element
It´s not as big as one might expect from the title, more focused on the museum and protagonists, but it perfectly fits to show characters' motivations, career ambitions, and investigation methods. Maybe the whole thing is more about establishing the whole Pendergast series than getting a compelling horror thriller, which is kind of a fake, but at least a good one.

Characters
Maybe a bit stereotypical, but still compelling, especially the dynamic of the crew and the different motivations and egoistic career motives to use the bloodbath for personal interests and manipulate the investigation in a direction that is good for them. Pushing scientific research in a certain direction, by establishing one's theories as the best ones, plays in here too. The strange field of the economics of science is maybe even weirder than the monster, forcing any kind of research to go to straight application road and forget essential, basic research, especially theoretical stuff.

How a museum is run
I guess that universities and secret underground military biological warfare labs roll in a similar way and how politics and money always play a big part in each decision, instead of the mentioned basic research and science, is a sad truth. That´s the problem with science that has no military or technical application.

Wit
Both characters and writing style are guarantees for good entertainment, there are puns, funny dialogues, quirky character motivations, and a general easygoing attitude. By this, the whole killing affairs aren´t close as disturbing as in other genre works with a general dark undertone.

Some outdated science
Of course, this decade old piece can´t be as accurate as modern ones, a big problem in any kind of technothriller sci fi works including science, duh. It´s often not sure if there aren´t even new developments that make mentioned facts obsolete or even wrong, but updating the facts is maybe sometimes a bad idea too, because it would change whole plots or make them impossible and destroy the credibility of the whole work.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: .