Review: The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy

Author: Benjamin Percy
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date of publication: August 2017

The Dark Net is real. An anonymous and often criminal arena that exists in the secret far reaches of the Web, some use it to manage Bitcoins, pirate movies and music, or traffic in drugs and stolen goods. And now an ancient darkness is gathering there as well. This force is threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew:

Twelve-year-old Hannah -- who has been fitted with the Mirage, a high-tech visual prosthetic to combat her blindness-- wonders why she sees shadows surrounding some people.

Lela, a technophobic journalist, has stumbled upon a story nobody wants her to uncover.

Mike Juniper, a one-time child evangelist who suffers from personal and literal demons, has an arsenal of weapons stored in the basement of the homeless shelter he runs.

And Derek, a hacker with a cause, believes himself a soldier of the Internet, part of a cyber army akin to Anonymous.

They have no idea what the Dark Net really contains.

Set in present-day Portland, The Dark Net is a cracked-mirror version of the digital nightmare we already live in, a timely and wildly imaginative techno-thriller about the evil that lurks in real and virtual spaces, and the power of a united few to fight back.

The Dark Net is another book that I have recently read that has left me on the fence.  I honestly can't say whether I liked it or not.  The synopsis was deceiving as it's more of a possible end of the world/supernatural story than a tech one. Basically there is an evil entity that is trying to end the world using the internet to do it.

The characters were mildly interesting.  Lela was probably the one I felt I got to know the best and the one I connected with the most.  The rest were kind of forgettable. They all make really stupid mistakes.  If someone tells you not to use your computer and to destroy it or you might turn into a murdering fiend...you might want to listen. The story left me with a lot of questions of logistics and the tech was a bit muddled for me to understand.  The ending was OK and while there was a lot of unanswered questions, I was OK with how it ended. 

In the end, I guess it was just an OK.  I wouldn't rush out to recommend it.  But it wasn't totally awful.