The Dark Net is real. And now an ancient darkness is gathering there. 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 wonders why she sees shadows surrounding some people; Lela, a technophobic journalist; Mike Juniper, a one-time child evangelist who has an arsenal of weapons stored in the basement of the homeless shelter he runs; andDerek, a hacker with a cause. They have no idea what the Dark Net really contains.
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The Dark Net
Benjamin Percy
The Dark Net is extremely different to how I expected it to be. The synopsis was not written well to portray what this book is actually about, which is probably down to too much editing for market. I was originally intrigued because of the interesting synopsis but I stayed because the actual premise was so much more. There’s a very large use of fantasy elements within the book, especially when it comes to the good vs evil and the demon aspects. Of course, being a fantasy lover, this appealed to me a lot more.
The characters really are a mixed bag of people. I really enjoyed Hannah and Mike who seemed to have the most interested and in depth back stories. I feel like we could have a whole books series about Mike Juniper being a bit of a demon slaying bad-ass. On the other hand, Lela was an awful character. She’s a journalist but a technophobe, which as I work with journalists every day, this just wouldn’t work. She would have been fired for not being able to do her job way before any of this story happened. She was also just an awful person, really rude and abrasive towards everyone. Even those who were trying to help sometimes.
The way the characters are written really fleshes them out completely. You can really tell that they’re separate people with the same goal. But they all have emotions and motivations that differentiate them. There’s also different skill sets, which are needed to complete the ‘puzzle’ that is the plot line. It does seem to run a very specific path that leads to the end of the book. I do think more needed to be put into this book to give more urgency to the task at hand sometimes.
I’m currently writing this review extremely late. I read The Dark Net around 2 months ago now and in hindsight the book isn’t memorable at all. I’m normally pretty good at remembering my to do list, but this book just slipped my mind for about a month. Which is strange as the premise is so odd with technology meeting magic and demons. But the book felt anticlimactic and the pacing wasn’t quite up to scratch so it didn’t seem to have that ‘wow’ moment. I kept thinking it was slipping more into other genres like horror, and then it flicks back to thriller and then insert some sci-fi and fantasy there.
POSITIVES
+ Technology + Magic + Demons = intriguing
+ Some likable characters
NEGATIVES
– Synopsis is extremely different to book
– Unlikable characters
– Unmemorable
I received The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy from the publisher via Book Bridgr. This is an unbiased and honest review