The Dark Net – Benjamin Percy

Mariner Books | Paperback | June 12, 2018

​We live in an age where we are constantly one click, one like, one post away from connecting and communicating with family, friends, and many more people we have never met face-to-face. No one would argue all these gadgets and apps have improved our lives. Although, it is also safe to say we have become dependent on them. Of course, if you ask The Dark Net author Benjamin Percy, possessed is a better way to describe this surge of connectivity.

For his fourth novel, Percy has crafted a cautionary tale that he has dressed up as a techno-horror novel. When Lela, a technophobic journalist, steals an abnormally shaped skull from an excavation site she is investigating, she becomes entangled in an ongoing battle with spectral beings. With the help of a homeless shelter attendant, a blind teenager, and a hacker with a cause, Lela must stop the virtual virus demonic forces have concocted beneath our Google searches from taking over Portland, Oregon—and the rest of the world.

With his usual imaginative flair, Percy has written another page-turner that is not only entertaining but also thought-provoking. He challenges us to consider what else might be at stake the next time we decide to pick up our laptops, tablets, or phones and mindlessly scroll.

With that said, the novel did feel incredibly rushed and too open-ended. Percy creates enormous stakes and tension in the first half of the novel. But as soon as he hits the second half, he stampedes toward a watered-down (and slightly predictable) resolution with little regard for character development or closure. So by the time readers reach the epilogue they are left wondering if The Dark Net is only the first installment to a series, and how going up against a demon virus has impacted the relationship between Lela, her niece, Hannah—aka the “blind” teenager—and Juniper—the homeless shelter attendant/demon slayer.